Publication Date:
2016-04-29
Description:
In a two-dimensional electron gas under a strong magnetic field, correlations generate emergent excitations distinct from electrons. It has been predicted that "composite fermions"--bound states of an electron with two magnetic flux quanta--can experience zero net magnetic field and form a Fermi sea. Using infinite-cylinder density matrix renormalization group numerical simulations, we verify the existence of this exotic Fermi sea, but find that the phase exhibits particle-hole symmetry. This is self-consistent only if composite fermions are massless Dirac particles, similar to the surface of a topological insulator. Exploiting this analogy, we observe the suppression of 2k(F) backscattering, a characteristic of Dirac particles. Thus, the phenomenology of Dirac fermions is also relevant to two-dimensional electron gases in the quantum Hall regime.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Geraedts, Scott D -- Zaletel, Michael P -- Mong, Roger S K -- Metlitski, Max A -- Vishwanath, Ashvin -- Motrunich, Olexei I -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2016 Apr 8;352(6282):197-201. doi: 10.1126/science.aad4302. Epub 2016 Apr 7.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Physics and Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. ; Station Q, Microsoft Research, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. ; Department of Physics and Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. ; Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5, Canada. Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. ; Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. ; Department of Physics and Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. motrunch@caltech.edu.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27124453" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
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Chemistry and Pharmacology
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Computer Science
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Medicine
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Natural Sciences in General
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Physics
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