Spin and valley ordering of fractional quantum Hall states in monolayer graphene

TL;DR

This paper investigates the complex spin and valley ordering phenomena in fractional quantum Hall states in monolayer graphene, revealing various competing phases influenced by anisotropies and symmetry considerations, with implications for experimental observations.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of spin and valley orderings in fractional quantum Hall states in graphene, incorporating realistic anisotropies and variational methods, and identifies novel ground states beyond previous models.

Findings

Identification of multiple competing phases including ferromagnetic, antiferromagnetic, charge-density wave, and Kekulé states.

Discovery of new anisotropy-induced states not present at neutrality, including a singlet state beyond variational predictions.

Observation of emergent SU(2) valley symmetry in certain fully spin-polarized states.

Abstract

We study spin and valley ordering in the quantum Hall fractions in monolayer graphene at Landau level filling factors $\nu_G=-2+n/3$ $(n=2,4,5)$. We use exact diagonalizations on the spherical as well as toroidal geometry by taking into account the effect of realistic anisotropies that break the spin/valley symmetry of the pure Coulomb interaction. We also use a variational method based on eigenstates of the fully $SU(4)$ symmetric limit. For all the fractions we study there are two-component states for which the competing phases are generalizations of those occurring at neutrality $\nu_G=0$. They are ferromagnetic, antiferromagnetic, charge-density wave and K\'ekul\'e phases, depending on the values of Ising or XY anisotropies in valley space. The varying spin-valley content of the states leads to ground state quantum numbers that are different from the $\nu_G=0$ case. For filling factor $\nu_G=-2+5/3$ there is a parent state in the $SU(4)$ limit which has a flavor content $(1,1/3,1/3,0)$ where the two components that are one-third filled form a two-component singlet. The addition of anisotropies leads to the formation of new states that have no counterpart at $\nu_G=0$. While some of them are predicted by the variational approach, we find notably that negative Ising-like valley anisotropy leads to the formation of a state which is a singlet in both spin and valley space and lies beyond the reach of the variational method. Also fully spin polarized two-component states at $\nu=-2+4/3$ and $\nu=-2+5/3$ display an emergent $SU(2)$ valley symmetry because they do not feel point-contact anisotropies. We discuss implications for current experiments concerning possible spin transitions.