Anomalous Interlayer Transport of Quantum Hall Bilayers in the Strongly Josephson-Coupled Regime

Observation of 1/3 fractional quantum Hall physics in balanced large angle twisted bilayer graphene

Magnetotransport of conventional semiconductor based double layer systems with barrier suppressed interlayer tunneling has been a rewarding subject due to the emergence of an interlayer coherent state that behaves as an excitonic superfluid. Large angle twisted bilayer graphene offers unprecedented strong interlayer Coulomb interaction, since both layer thickness and layer spacing are of atomic scale and a barrier is no more needed as the twist induced momentum mismatch suppresses tunneling. The extra valley degree of freedom also adds richness. Here we report the observation of fractional quantum Hall physics at 1/3 total filling for balanced layer population in this system. Monte Carlo simulations support that the ground state is also an excitonic superfluid but the excitons are composed of fractional rather than elementary charges. The observed phase transitions with an applied displacement field at this and other fractional fillings are also addressed with simulations. They reveal ground states with different topology and symmetry properties.

Josephson-like Tunnel Resonance and Large Coulomb Drag in GaAs-Based Electron-Hole Bilayers

Bilayers consisting of two-dimensional (2D) electron and hole gases separated by a 10 nm thick AlGaAs barrier are formed by charge accumulation in epitaxially grown GaAs. Both vertical and lateral electric transport are measured in the millikelvin temperature range. The conductivity between the layers shows a sharp tunnel resonance at a density of 1.1×10^{10}  cm^{-2}, which is consistent with a Josephson-like enhanced tunnel conductance. The tunnel resonance disappears with increasing densities and the two 2D charge gases start to show 2D-Fermi-gas behavior. Interlayer interactions persist causing a positive drag voltage that is very large at small densities. The transition from the Josephson-like tunnel resonance to the Fermi-gas behavior is interpreted as a phase transition from an exciton gas in the Bose-Einstein-condensate state to a degenerate electron-hole Fermi gas.

Orbitally Controlled Quantum Hall States in Decoupled Two-Bilayer Graphene Sheets

The authors report on integer and fractional quantum Hall states in a stack of two twisted Bernal bilayer graphene sheets. By exploiting the momentum mismatch in reciprocal space, the single-particle tunneling between both bilayers is suppressed. Since the bilayers are spatially separated by only 0.34 nm, the stack benefits from strong interlayer Coulombic interactions. These interactions can cause the formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate. Indeed, such a condensate is observed for half-filling in each bilayer sheet. However, only when the partially filled levels have orbital index 1. It is absent for partially filled levels with orbital index 0. This discrepancy is tentatively attributed to the role of skyrmion/anti-skyrmion pair excitations and the dependence of the energy of these excitations on the orbital index. The application of asymmetric top and bottom gate voltages enables to influence the orbital nature of the electronic states of the graphene bilayers at the chemical potential and to navigate in orbital mixed space. The latter hosts an even denominator fractional quantum Hall state at total filling of -3/2. These observations suggest a unique edge reconstruction involving both electrons and chiral p-wave composite fermions.

Robust Interlayer-Coherent Quantum Hall States in Twisted Bilayer Graphene

We introduce a novel two-dimensional electronic system with ultrastrong interlayer interactions, namely, twisted bilayer graphene with a large twist angle, as an ideal ground for realizing interlayer-coherent excitonic condensates. In these systems, sub-nanometer atomic separation between the layers allows significant interlayer interactions, while interlayer electron tunneling is geometrically suppressed due to the large twist angle. By fully exploiting these two features we demonstrate that a sequence of odd-integer quantum Hall states with interlayer coherence appears at the second Landau level (N = 1). Notably the energy gaps for these states are of order 1 K, which is several orders of magnitude greater than those in GaAs. Furthermore, a variety of quantum Hall phase transitions are observed experimentally. All the experimental observations are largely consistent with our phenomenological model calculations. Hence, we establish that a large twist angle system is an excellent platform for high-temperature excitonic condensation.

Odd Integer Quantum Hall States with Interlayer Coherence in Twisted Bilayer Graphene

We report on the quantum Hall effect in two stacked graphene layers rotated by 2°. The tunneling strength among the layers can be varied from very weak to strong via the mechanism of magnetic breakdown when tuning the density. Odd-integer quantum Hall physics is not anticipated in the regime of suppressed tunneling for balanced layer densities, yet it is observed. We interpret this as a signature of Coulomb interaction induced interlayer coherence and Bose-Einstein condensation of excitons that form at half filling of each layer. A density imbalance gives rise to reentrant behavior due to a phase transition from the interlayer coherent state to incompressible behavior caused by simultaneous condensation of both layers in different quantum Hall states. With increasing overall density, magnetic breakdown gains the upper hand. As a consequence of the enhanced interlayer tunneling, the interlayer coherent state and the phase transition vanish.

Quasiparticle Tunneling across an Exciton Condensate

The bulk properties of the bilayer quantum Hall state at total filling factor one have been intensively studied in experiment. Correlation induced phenomena such as Josephson-like tunneling and zero Hall resistance have been reported. In contrast, the edge of this bilayer state remains largely unexplored. Here, we address this edge physics by realizing quasiparticle tunneling across a quantum point contact. The tunneling manifests itself as a zero bias peak that grows with decreasing temperature. Its shape agrees quantitatively with the formula for weak quasiparticle tunneling frequently deployed in the fractional quantum Hall regime in single layer systems, consistent with theory. Interestingly, we extract a fractional charge of only a few percent of the free electron charge, which may be a signature of the theoretically predicted leakage between the chiral edge and the bulk mediated by gapless excitations.

Type-II Ising pairing in few-layer stanene

Spin-orbit coupling has proven indispensable in the realization of topological materials and, more recently, Ising pairing in two-dimensional superconductors. This pairing mechanism relies on inversion symmetry–breaking and sustains anomalously large in-plane polarizing magnetic fields whose upper limit is predicted to diverge at low temperatures. Here, we show that the recently discovered superconductor few-layer stanene, epitaxially strained gray tin (α-Sn), exhibits a distinct type of Ising pairing between carriers residing in bands with different orbital indices near the Γ-point. The bands are split as a result of spin-orbit locking without the participation of inversion symmetry–breaking. The in-plane upper critical field is strongly enhanced at ultralow temperature and reveals the predicted upturn.