Precise Experimental Test of the Luttinger Theorem and Particle-Hole Symmetry for a Strongly Correlated Fermionic System

TL;DR

This paper provides a precise experimental verification of the Luttinger theorem and particle-hole symmetry in a strongly correlated two-dimensional fermionic system, specifically for composite fermions in the quantum Hall regime.

Contribution

It offers the first direct geometric resonance measurements of composite fermions' Fermi wavevector at low densities, confirming Luttinger theorem validity and particle-hole symmetry in this context.

Findings

Luttinger theorem holds for composite fermions over a range of interactions.

Particle-hole symmetry is obeyed in the system.

Measured Fermi sea area differs from Dirac model predictions.

Abstract

A fundamental concept in physics is the Fermi surface, the constant-energy surface in momentum space encompassing all the occupied quantum states at absolute zero temperature. In 1960, Luttinger postulated that the area enclosed by the Fermi surface should remain unaffected even when electron-electron interaction is turned on, so long as the interaction does not cause a phase transition. Understanding what determines the Fermi surface size is a crucial and yet unsolved problem in strongly interacting systems such as high-$T_{c}$ superconductors. Here we present a precise test of the Luttinger theorem for a two-dimensional Fermi liquid system where the exotic quasi-particles themselves emerge from the strong interaction, namely for the Fermi sea of composite fermions (CFs). Via direct, geometric resonance measurements of the CFs' Fermi wavevector down to very low electron densities, we show that the Luttinger theorem is obeyed over a significant range of interaction strengths, in the sense that the Fermi sea area is determined by the density of the \textit{minority carriers} in the lowest Landau level. Our data also address the ongoing debates on whether or not CFs obey particle-hole symmetry, and if they are Dirac particles. We find that particle-hole symmetry is obeyed, but the measured Fermi sea area differs quantitatively from that predicted by the Dirac model for CFs.