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A highly correlated topological bubble phase of composite fermions

Nature Physics volume 19, pages 689–693 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Strong interactions and topology drive a wide variety of correlated ground states. Some of the most interesting of these ground states, such as fractional quantum Hall states and fractional Chern insulators, have fractionally charged quasiparticles. Correlations in these phases are captured by the binding of electrons and vortices into emergent particles called composite fermions. Composite fermion quasiparticles are randomly localized at high levels of disorder and may exhibit charge order when there is not too much disorder in the system. However, more complex correlations are predicted when composite fermion quasiparticles cluster into a bubble, and then these bubbles order on a lattice. Such a highly correlated ground state is termed the bubble phase of composite fermions. Here we report the observation of such a bubble phase of composite fermions, evidenced by the re-entrance of the fractional quantum Hall effect. We associate this re-entrance with a bubble phase with two composite fermion quasiparticles per bubble. Our results demonstrate the existence of a new class of strongly correlated topological phases driven by clustering and charge ordering of emergent quasiparticles.

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Fig. 1: Representation of various topological phases of the electron gas with different bulk insulators.
Fig. 2: Magnetoresistance Rxx and Hall resistance Rxy over a broad range of magnetic fields B.
Fig. 3: Magnetoresistance Rxx and Hall resistance Rxy at selected values of the temperature.
Fig. 4: Magnetic field and temperature dependence of the magnetoresistance Rxx and Hall resistance Rxy for filling factors that include the ν = 5/3 to ν = 8/5 range.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge useful discussions with J. Jain and V. Scarola. Measurements at Purdue were supported by the NSF DMR Grant No. 1904497. The sample growth effort of L.N.P., K.W.W. and K.W.B. of Princeton University was supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Grant No. GBMF 4420 and the National Science Foundation MRSEC Grant No. DMR-1420541.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Vidhi Shingla, Haoyun Huang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Vidhi Shingla, Haoyun Huang & Gábor A. Csáthy

  2. Department of Physics, Monmouth College, Monmouth, IL, USA

    Ashwani Kumar

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Loren N. Pfeiffer, Kenneth W. West & Kirk W. Baldwin

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  1. Vidhi Shingla
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Contributions

V.S. and A.K. performed low-temperature transport measurements. L.N.P., K.W.W. and K.W.B. produced molecular beam epitaxy-grown GaAs/AlGaAs samples and characterized them. V.S., H.H. and G.A.C. analysed the data and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Gábor A. Csáthy.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Multiple observations of the RFQHS.

Several longitudinal magnetoresistance 𝑅𝑥𝑥 and Hall resistance 𝑅x𝑦 measurements. Panels a and b have data from Sample 1, collected after cycling the sample to room temperature. Panel c has data from Sample 2. All panels exhibit the RFQHS, as evident from a splitting of the longitudinal magnetoresistance into two peaks and reentrance of the Hall resistance to Rxy = 3h/5e2.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 2 The longitudinal magnetoresistance Rxx and Ryy as measured along two mutually perpendicular crystal directions and the Hall resistance.

Data were collected from Sample 1 at T = 12 mK. While there are small but noticeable differences in the two longitudinal magnetoresistance traces, at the formation of the RFQHS the longitudinal magnetoresistance is nearly vanishing for both crystal directions and it is nearly isotropic. Panels a and b show data collected along two mutually perpendicular crystal axes of the GaAs crystal.

Source data

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary text and references.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 2

Raw data for Fig. 2 of the main text.

Source Data Fig. 3

Raw data for Fig. 3 of the main text.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 1

Raw data for Extended Data Fig. 1 of the Supplementary Information.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 2

Raw data for Extended Data Fig. 2 of the Supplementary Information.

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Shingla, V., Huang, H., Kumar, A. et al. A highly correlated topological bubble phase of composite fermions. Nat. Phys. 19, 689–693 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-01939-2

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