Fractional Hofstadter States in Graphene on Hexagonal Boron Nitride

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that moiré pattern-induced substrate interactions in graphene on aligned hBN favor electron-crystal states over quantum fluid states in fractional Landau levels, explaining recent experimental observations.

Contribution

It reveals how moiré patterns influence the competition between electron-crystal and quantum fluid states in fractional Landau levels of graphene on hBN.

Findings

Moiré patterns tilt the balance towards electron-crystal states.

The substrate interaction explains recent experimental results.

Long-period moiré patterns significantly affect fractional quantum Hall states.

Abstract

In fractionally filled Landau levels there is only a small energy difference between broken translational symmetry electron-crystal states and exotic correlated quantum fluid states. We show that the spatially periodic substrate interaction associated with the long period moir\'{e} patterns present in graphene on nearly aligned hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) tilts this close competition in favor of the former, explaining surprising recent experimental findings.