Interlayer Interactions and the Fermi Energy of Bilayer Composite Fermion Metals

TL;DR

This study investigates the incoherent phase of bilayer composite fermion metals near the excitonic condensate transition, revealing how interlayer interactions influence the Fermi energy and spectral functions.

Contribution

It provides new experimental insights into how interlayer screening affects the Fermi energy and spectral properties in bilayer composite fermion systems.

Findings

Narrower spectral functions in closely spaced bilayers.

Reduced Fermi energy of the composite fermion metal in closely spaced bilayers.

Interlayer screening softens intralayer Coulomb interactions.

Abstract

When two 2D electron gas layers, each at Landau level filling factor $\nu=1/2$, are close together a condensate of interlayer excitons emerges at low temperature. Although the excitonic phase is qualitatively well understood, the incoherent phase just above the critical layer separation is not. Using a combination of interlayer tunneling spectroscopy and conventional transport, we explore the incoherent phase in samples both near the phase boundary and further from it. In the more closely spaced bilayers we find the electronic spectral functions narrower and the Fermi energy of the $\nu = 1/2$ composite fermion metal smaller than in the more widely separated bilayers. We attribute these effects to a softening of the intralayer Coulomb interaction due to interlayer screening.