A highly correlated topological bubble phase of composite fermions

• Published in: Nature physics Vol. 19; no. 5; pp. 689 - 693
• Main Authors: Shingla, Vidhi, Huang, Haoyun, Kumar, Ashwani, Pfeiffer, Loren N., West, Kenneth W., Baldwin, Kirk W., Csáthy, Gábor A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01-05-2023; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 639/766/119/2792; 639/766/119/2794; Atomic; Bubbles; Classical and Continuum Physics; Clustering; Complex Systems; Condensed Matter Physics; Correlation; Electromagnetism; Electrons; Elementary excitations; Fermions; Ground state; Insulators; Mathematical and Computational Physics; Molecular; Optical and Plasma Physics; Particulate composites; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum Hall effect; Strong interactions (field theory); Theoretical; Topology
• ISSN: 1745-2473; 1745-2481
• DOI: 10.1038/s41567-023-01939-2

Strong interactions and topology drive a wide variety of correlated ground states. Some of the most interesting of these ground states, such as fractional quantum Hall states and fractional Chern insulators, have fractionally charged quasiparticles. Correlations in these phases are captured by the binding of electrons and vortices into emergent particles called composite fermions. Composite fermion quasiparticles are randomly localized at high levels of disorder and may exhibit charge order when there is not too much disorder in the system. However, more complex correlations are predicted when composite fermion quasiparticles cluster into a bubble, and then these bubbles order on a lattice. Such a highly correlated ground state is termed the bubble phase of composite fermions. Here we report the observation of such a bubble phase of composite fermions, evidenced by the re-entrance of the fractional quantum Hall effect. We associate this re-entrance with a bubble phase with two composite fermion quasiparticles per bubble. Our results demonstrate the existence of a new class of strongly correlated topological phases driven by clustering and charge ordering of emergent quasiparticles.
Composite fermions emerge in the fractional quantum Hall effect. Now, it has been shown that these objects can group into bubbles and that these can order into a lattice.