Quantum bubble defects in the lowest Landau level crystal

Abstract

A longstanding puzzle for the lowest Landau level crystal phase has been an order of magnitude discrepancy between the theoretically calculated energy of the defects and the measured activation gap. We perform an extensive study of various kinds of defects in the correlated composite fermion crystal and find that the lowest energy defect is a six-fold symmetric "hyper-correlated bubble interstitial," in which an interstitial particle forms a strongly correlated bound state with a particle of the crystal. The energy of the bubble defect is a factor of $\sim$3 smaller than that of the lowest energy defect in a Hartree-Fock crystal. The anomalously low activation energies measured in transport experiments are thus a signature of the unusual quantum nature of the crystal and its defects.

5 pages

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Moving crystal phases of a quantum Wigner solid in an ultra-high-quality 2D electron system
• Fractional Quantum Hall State at Filling Factor $\nu =1/4$ in Ultra-High-Quality GaAs 2D Hole Systems
• Correlated states of 2D electrons near the Landau level filling $\nu =1/7$
• Signatures of correlated defects in an ultra-clean Wigner crystal in the extreme quantum limit
• Developing fractional quantum Hall states at even-denominator fillings 1/6 and 1/8
• Competing Many-Body Phases at Small Fillings in Ultrahigh-Quality GaAs 2D Hole Systems: Role of Landau Level Mixing
• Developing fractional quantum Hall states at $\nu$ = $\frac{1}{7}$ and $\frac{2}{11}$ in the presence of significant Landau level mixing