Observation of an in-plane magnetic-field-driven phase transition in a quantum Hall system with SU(4) symmetry

Abstract

In condensed matter physics, the study of electronic states with SU(N) symmetry has attracted considerable and growing attention in recent years, as systems with such a symmetry can often have a spontaneous symmetry-breaking effect giving rise to a novel ground state. For example, pseudospin quantum Hall ferromagnet of broken SU(2) symmetry has been realized by bringing two Landau levels close to degeneracy in a bilayer quantum Hall system. In the past several years, the exploration of collective states in other multi-component quantum Hall systems has emerged. Here we show the conventional pseudospin quantum Hall ferromagnetic states with broken SU(2) symmetry collapsed rapidly into an unexpected state with broken SU(4) symmetry, by in-plane magnetic field in a two-subband GaAs/AlGaAs two-dimensional electron system at filling factor around $\nu =4$. Within a narrow tilting range angle of 0.5 degrees, the activation energy increases as much as 12 K. While the origin of this puzzling observation remains to be exploited, we discuss the possibility of a long-sought pairing state of electrons with a four-fold degeneracy.

arXiv comment13 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• A Quantized $\nu =5/2$ State in a Two-Subband Quantum Hall System
• Many-body effects on the ${\rho }_{xx}$ ringlike structures in two-subband wells
• Collapse of ${\rho }_{xx}$ ringlike structures in 2DEGs under tilted magnetic fields
• Pseudospin anisotropy of trilayer semiconductor quantum Hall ferromagnets
• Exact Exchange: a pathway for a Density Functional Theory of the Integer Quantum Hall Effect