Broken rotation symmetry in the fractional quantum Hall system

We demonstrate that the two-dimensonal electron system in a strong perpendicular magnetic field has stable states which break rotational but not translational symmetry. The Laughlin fluid becomes unstable to these states in quantum wells whose thickness exceeds a critical value which depends on the electron density. The order parameter at 1/3 reduced density resembles that of a nematic liquid crystal, in that a residual two-fold rotation axis is present in the low symmetry phase. At filling factors 1/5 and 1/7, there are states with four- and six-fold axes, as well. We discuss the experimental detection of these phases.Comment: 8 pages, LaTex 3.1, figures attache

Stability and effective masses of composite-fermions in the first and second Landau Level

We propose a measure of the stability of composite fermions (CF's) at even-denominator Landau-level filling fractions. Assuming Landau-level mixing effects are not strong, we show that the CF liquid at $\nu=2+1/2$ in the $n=1$ Landau level cannot exist and relate this to the absence of a hierarchy of incompressible states for filling fractions $2+1/3 < \nu < 2+2/3$. We find that a polarized CF liquid should exist at $\nu=2+1/4$. We also show that, for CF states, the variation with system size of the ground state energy of interacting electrons follows that for non-interacting particles in zero magnetic field. We use this to estimate the CF effective masses.Comment: 9 pages, Revtex, PSIZ-TP-940

Monte Carlo simulation method for Laughlin-like states in a disk geometry

We discuss an alternative accurate Monte Carlo method to calculate the ground-state energy and related quantities for Laughlin states of the fractional quantum Hall effect in a disk geometry. This alternative approach allows us to obtain accurate bulk regime (thermodynamic limit) values for various quantities from Monte Carlo simulations with a small number of particles (much smaller than that needed with standard Monte Carlo approaches).Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 2 table

Transition from quantum Hall to compressible states in the second Landau level: new light on the ν\nu=5/2 enigma

Quantum Hall states at filling fraction $\nu$=5/2 are examined by numerical diagonalization. Spin-polarized and -unpolarized states of systems with $N\le 18$ electrons are studied, neglecting effects of Landau level mixing. We find that the ground state is spin polarized. It is incompressible and has a large overlap with paired states like the Pfaffian. For a given sample, the energy gap is about 11 times smaller than at $\nu$=1/3. Evidence is presented of phase transitions to compressible states, driven by the interaction strength at short distance. A reinterpretation of experiments is suggested.Comment: This paper has already appeared in PRL, but has not been on the we

Localized quasiholes and the Majorana fermion in fractional quantum Hall state at nu=5/2 via direct diagonalization

Using exact diagonalization in the spherical geometry, we investigate systems of localized quasiholes at nu=5/2 for interactions interpolating between the pure Coulomb and the three-body interaction for which the Moore-Read state is the exact ground state. We show that the charge e/4 quasihole can be easily localized by means of a delta-function pinning potential. Using a tuned smooth pinning potential, the quasihole radius can be limited to approximately three magnetic length units. For systems of two quasiholes, adiabatic continuity between the Moore-Read and the Coulomb limit holds for the ground state, while for four quasiholes, the lowest two energy states exhibit adiabatic continuity. This implies the existence of a Majorana fermion for pure Coulomb interaction. We also present preliminary results in the Coulomb limit for braiding in systems containing four quasiholes, with up to 14 electrons, diagonalizing in the full spin-polarized sector of the second Landau-level Hilbert space.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Microscopic non-equilibrium theory of quantum well solar cells

We present a microscopic theory of bipolar quantum well structures in the photovoltaic regime, based on the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism for a multi band tight binding Hamiltonian. The quantum kinetic equations for the single particle Green's functions of electrons and holes are self-consistently coupled to Poisson's equation, including inter-carrier scattering on the Hartree level. Relaxation and broadening mechanisms are considered by the inclusion of acoustic and optical electron-phonon interaction in a self consistent Born approximation of the scattering self energies. Photogeneration of carriers is described on the same level in terms of a self energy derived from the standard dipole approximation of the electron-photon interaction. Results from a simple two band model are shown for the local density of states, spectral response, current spectrum, and current-voltage characteristics for generic single quantum well systems.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures; corrected typos, changed caption Fig. 1, replaced Fig.

Composite Fermions in Negative Effective Magnetic Field: A Monte-Carlo Study

The method of Jain and Kamilla [PRB {\bf 55}, R4895 (1997)] allows numerical generation of composite fermion trial wavefunctions for large numbers of electrons in high magnetic fields at filling fractions of the form nu=p/(2mp+1) with m and p positive integers. In the current paper we generalize this method to the case where the composite fermions are in an effective (mean) field with opposite sign from the actual physical field, i.e. when p is negative. We examine both the ground state energies and the low energy neutral excitation spectra of these states. Using particle-hole symmetry we can confirm the correctness of our method by comparing results for the series m=1 with p>0 (previously calculated by others) to our results for the conjugate series m=1 with p <0. Finally, we present similar results for ground state energies and low energy neutral excitations for the states with m=2 and p <0 which were not previously addressable, comparing our results to the m=1 case and the p > 0, m=2 cases.Comment: 11 page

Excitation gaps in fractional quantum Hall states: An exact diagonalization study

We compute energy gaps for spin-polarized fractional quantum Hall states in the lowest Landau level at filling fractions nu=1/3, 2/5,3/7 and 4/9 using exact diagonalization of systems with up to 16 particles and extrapolation to the infinite system-size limit. The gaps calculated for a pure Coulomb interaction and ignoring finite width effects, disorder and LL mixing agree with predictions of composite fermion theory provided the logarithmic corrections to the effective mass are included. This is in contrast with previous estimates, which, as we show, overestimated the gaps at nu=2/5 and 3/7 by around 15%. We also study the reduction of the gaps as a result of the non-zero width of the 2D layer. We show that these effects are accurately accounted for using either Gaussian or z*Gaussian' (zG) trial wavefunctions, which we show are significantly better variational wavefunctions than the Fang-Howard wavefunction. For quantum well parameters typical of heterostructure samples, we find gap reductions of around 20%. The experimental gaps, after accounting heuristically for disorder,are still around 40% smaller than the computed gaps. However, for the case of tetracene layers inmetal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) devices we find that the measured activation gaps are close to those we compute. We discuss possible reasons why the difference between computed and measured activation gaps is larger in GaAs heterostructures than in MIS devices. Finally, we present new calculations using systems with up to 18 electrons of the gap at nu=5/2 including width corrections.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figure