Valley Isospin Controlled Fractional Quantum Hall States in Bilayer Graphene

TL;DR

This study demonstrates precise control of valley isospin in bilayer graphene, revealing new fractional quantum Hall states and phase diagrams, advancing understanding of topological orders and quantum information potential.

Contribution

It introduces a dual-gated bilayer graphene platform with enhanced quality, uncovering novel fractional quantum Hall states and elucidating valley isospin dynamics with a two-component composite fermion model.

Findings

Discovery of a new even-denominator fractional quantum Hall state at ν=5/2.

Observation of predicted Levin-Halperin daughter states near fractional quantum Hall states.

Construction of a comprehensive valley polarization phase diagram for fractional states.

Abstract

A two-dimensional electron system placed in a magnetic field develops Landau levels, where strong Coulomb interactions lead to the appearance of many-body correlated ground states. Quantum numbers similar to the electron spin enable the understanding and control of complex ground state order and collective excitations. Owing to its spin, valley and orbital degrees of freedom, Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene offers a rich platform to pursue correlated phenomena in two dimensions. In this work, we fabricate dual-gated Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene devices and demonstrate unprecedented fine control over its valley isospin degrees of freedom using a perpendicular electric field. Higher sample quality enables us to probe regimes obscured by disorder in previous studies. We present evidence for a new even-denominator fractional quantum Hall state at filling factor {\nu} = 5/2. The 5/2 state is found to be spontaneously valley polarized in the limit of vanishing valley Zeeman splitting, consistent with a theoretical prediction made regarding the spin polarization of the Moore-Read state. In the vicinity of the even-denominator fractional quantum Hall states, we observe the appearance of the predicted Levin-Halperin daughter states of the Moore-Read Pfaffian wave function at {\nu}= 3/2, 7/2, and -1/2 and of the anti-Pfaffian at {\nu}= 5/2. These observations suggest the breaking of particle-hole symmetry in bilayer graphene. We construct a comprehensive valley polarization phase diagram for the Jain sequence fractional states surrounding filling factor 3/2. These results are well explained by a two-component composite fermion model, further demonstrating the SU(2) nature of the valley isospin in bilayer graphene. Our experiment paves the path for future efforts of manipulating the valley isospin in bilayer graphene to engineer exotic topological orders and quantum information processes.