Composite Fermion Mass

TL;DR

This study measures the effective mass of composite fermions in high-quality GaAs quantum wells, revealing its dependence on well width and highlighting discrepancies with theoretical predictions, thus advancing understanding of fractional quantum Hall states.

Contribution

It provides experimental measurements of composite fermion mass in varying quantum well widths, offering insights into the effects of layer thickness on FQHS and challenging existing theories.

Findings

Composite fermion mass increases with well width.

Mass measurements are less affected by disorder than energy gaps.

Significant discrepancies exist between experimental data and theoretical models.

Abstract

Composite fermions (CFs), exotic quasi-particles formed by pairing an electron and an even number of magnetic flux quanta emerge at high magnetic fields in an interacting electron system, and can explain phenomena such as the fractional quantum Hall state (FQHS) and other many-body phases. CFs possess an effective mass ($m_{CF}$) whose magnitude is inversely related to the most fundamental property of a FQHS, namely its energy gap. We present here experimental measurements of $m_{CF}$ in ultra-high quality two-dimensional electron systems confined to GaAs quantum wells of varying thickness. An advantage of measuring $m_{CF}$ over gap measurements is that mass values are insensitive to disorder and are therefore ideal for comparison with theoretical calculations, especially for high-order FQHS. Our data reveal that $m_{CF}$ increases with increasing well width, reflecting a decrease in the energy gap as the electron layer becomes thicker and the in-plane Coulomb energy softens. Comparing our measured masses with available theoretical results, we find significant quantitative discrepancies, highlighting that more rigorous and accurate calculations are needed to explain the experimental data.