Flatland Electrons in High Magnetic Fields

This paper provides a review of developments in the physics of two-dimensional electron systems in perpendicular magnetic fields.Comment: Review paper, to be published in book series "High Magnetic Fields: Science and Technology" edited by Fritz Herlach and Noboru Miura, World Scientific C

Transference of Transport Anisotropy to Composite Fermions

When interacting two-dimensional electrons are placed in a large perpendicular magnetic field, to minimize their energy, they capture an even number of flux quanta and create new particles called composite fermions (CFs). These complex electron-flux-bound states offer an elegant explanation for the fractional quantum Hall effect. Furthermore, thanks to the flux attachment, the effective field vanishes at a half-filled Landau level and CFs exhibit Fermi-liquid-like properties, similar to their zero-field electron counterparts. However, being solely influenced by interactions, CFs should possess no memory whatever of the electron parameters. Here we address a fundamental question: Does an anisotropy of the electron effective mass and Fermi surface (FS) survive composite fermionization? We measure the resistance of CFs in AlAs quantum wells where electrons occupy an elliptical FS with large eccentricity and anisotropic effective mass. Similar to their electron counterparts, CFs also exhibit anisotropic transport, suggesting an anisotropy of CF effective mass and FS.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Counterflow measurements in strongly correlated GaAs hole bilayers: evidence for electron-hole pairing

We study interacting GaAs bilayer hole systems, with very small interlayer tunneling, in a counterflow geometry where equal currents are passed in opposite directions in the two, independently contacted layers. At low temperatures, both the longitudinal and Hall counterflow resistances tend to vanish in the quantum Hall state at total bilayer filling $\nu=1$, demonstrating the pairing of oppositely charged carriers in opposite layers. The temperature dependence of the counterflow Hall resistance is anomalous compared to the other transport coefficients: even at relatively high temperatures ($\sim$600mK), it develops a very deep minimum, with a value that is about an order of magnitude smaller than the longitudinal counterflow resistivity.Comment: 4+ pages, 4 figure

High-quality quantum point contact in two-dimensional GaAs (311)A hole system

We studied ballistic transport across a quantum point contact (QPC) defined in a high-quality, GaAs (311)A two-dimensional (2D) hole system using shallow etching and top-gating. The QPC conductance exhibits up to 11 quantized plateaus. The ballistic one-dimensional subbands are tuned by changing the lateral confinement and the Fermi energy of the holes in the QPC. We demonstrate that the positions of the plateaus (in gate-voltage), the source-drain data, and the negative magneto-resistance data can be understood in a simple model that takes into account the variation, with gate bias, of the hole density and the width of the QPC conducting channel

Contrast between spin and valley degrees of freedom

We measure the renormalized effective mass (m*) of interacting two-dimensional electrons confined to an AlAs quantum well while we control their distribution between two spin and two valley subbands. We observe a marked contrast between the spin and valley degrees of freedom: When electrons occupy two spin subbands, m* strongly depends on the valley occupation, but not vice versa. Combining our m* data with the measured spin and valley susceptibilities, we find that the renormalized effective Lande g-factor strongly depends on valley occupation, but the renormalized conduction-band deformation potential is nearly independent of the spin occupation.Comment: 4+ pages, 2 figure

Interaction and disorder in bilayer counterflow transport at filling factor one

We study high mobility, interacting GaAs bilayer hole systems exhibiting counterflow superfluid transport at total filling factor $\nu=1$. As the density of the two layers is reduced, making the bilayer more interacting, the counterflow Hall resistivity ($\rho_{xy}$) decreases at a given temperature, while the counterflow longitudinal resistivity ($\rho_{xx}$), which is much larger than $\rho_{xy}$, hardly depends on density. On the other hand, a small imbalance in the layer densities can result in significant changes in $\rho_{xx}$ at $\nu=1$, while $\rho_{xy}$ remains vanishingly small. Our data suggest that the finite $\rho_{xx}$ at $\nu=1$ is a result of mobile vortices in the superfluid created by the ubiquitous disorder in this system.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure