Author ORCID Identifier
Date Available
7-22-2021
Year of Publication
2021
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
College
Arts and Sciences
Department/School/Program
Physics and Astronomy
First Advisor
Dr. Ganpathy Murthy
Abstract
Quantum Hall systems have a one-body energy spectrum consisting of dispersion-less Landau levels. Electron-electron interactions thus dominate in partially filled Landau levels, which exhibit a myriad of strongly correlated phases such as quantum hall ferromagnets and fractional quantum Hall phases. We study two examples of these phenomena.
In the first project, we explore the ground state of a system with an interface between two semi-infinite regions with fillings ν= 4 and ν= 3 respectively. The width of the interface can be controlled by varying the background potential, which provides an additional tuning parameter. For a certain range of interaction strengths, the ν= 4 bulk is unpolarized whereas the ν= 3 bulk is fully polarized. In the parameter space spanned by the interaction strength and width of the interface, we find two phases at the interface. Phase A has spin as a good quantum number, and the long-wavelength spin edge excitations are gapped. In phase B, spin rotation symmetry is spontaneously broken at the mean-field level. Using symmetry arguments we find the effective theory near the interface of phase B. This effective theory is known to have gapless long-wavelength spin excitations.
In the second project, we study the ground state of a tunnel-decoupled double-layer graphene system when both layers are undoped. We find a simple Hamiltonian in the continuum limit from symmetries of the system. Using the Hartree-Fock approximation we find a state with inter-layer coherence with broken layer U(1) symmetry. This phase becomes magnetized in presence of a non-zero Zeeman field. A first-order phase transition can be driven from the ferromagnetic phase to the magnetized inter-layer coherent phase by increasing the Zeeman field. We predict the number of gapless modes in the bulk.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2021.304
Funding Information
National science foundation, grant number DMR-1306897 (May 2017-August 2017 and May 2018-August 2018)
US-Israel Binational Science Foundation, grant number 2016130 (May 2020-August 2020 and May 2021-August 2021)
Recommended Citation
Saha, Amartya, "STRONGLY CORRELATED PHASES IN QUANTUM HALL SYSTEMS" (2021). Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy. 87.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/physastron_etds/87
