Ferroelectric quantum Hall phase revealed by visualizing Landau level wave function interference

Randeria, Mallika T.; Feldman, Benjamin E.; Wu, Fengcheng; Ding, Hao; Gyenis, András; Ji, Huiwen; Cava, R. J.; MacDonald, Allan H.; Yazdani, Ali

doi:10.1038/s41567-018-0148-2

Title: Ferroelectric quantum Hall phase revealed by visualizing Landau level wave function interference

Journal Article · Mon May 14 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · Nature Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-018-0148-2· OSTI ID:1466366

Randeria, Mallika T. ^[1];

^[2]; Wu, Fengcheng ^[3];

^[1]; Gyenis, András ^[1]; Ji, Huiwen ^[1]; Cava, R. J. ^[1]; MacDonald, Allan H. ^[4];

^[1]

Princeton Univ., Princeton, NJ (United States)
Princeton Univ., Princeton, NJ (United States); Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States)
Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
The Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)

States with spontaneously broken symmetry can form due to Coulomb interactions in electronic systems with multiple internal degrees of freedom. Materials with several degenerate regions in the Brillouin zone-called valleys-offer a rich setting for the emergence of such states, which have potential electronic and optical applications. To date, identification of these broken-symmetry phases has mostly relied on macroscopic transport or optical properties. Here we demonstrate a direct approach by visualizing the wavefunctions of bismuth surface states with a scanning tunnelling microscope. Strong spin-orbit coupling on the surface of bismuth leads to six degenerate, teardrop-shaped, hole valleys. Our spectroscopic measurements reveal that exchange interactions fully lift this degeneracy at high magnetic field, and we are able to determine the nature of the valley ordering by imaging the broken-symmetry Landau level wavefunctions. The spatial features of singly degenerate Landau level wavefunctions near isolated defects contain unique signatures of interference between spin-textured valleys, which identify the electronic ground state as a quantum Hall ferroelectric. As a result, our observations confirm the recent prediction that interactions in strongly anisotropic valley systems favour the occupation of a single valley, giving rise to emergent ferroelectricity in the surface state of bismuth.

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Research Organization:: Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; U.S. Army Research Laboratory, U.S. Army Research Office (ARO); Welch Foundation

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-06CH11357

OSTI ID:: 1466366

Journal Information:: Nature Physics, Vol. 14, Issue 8; ISSN 1745-2473

Publisher:: Nature Publishing Group (NPG)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 10 works

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Cited By (7)

Interacting multi-channel topological boundary modes in a quantum Hall valley system Randeria, Mallika T.; Agarwal, Kartiek; Feldman, Benjamin E. Nature, Vol. 566, Issue 7744 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-0913-0	journal	February 2019
A modular ultra-high vacuum millikelvin scanning tunneling microscope Wong, Dillon; Jeon, Sangjun; Nuckolls, Kevin P. Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 91, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5132872	journal	February 2020
Topology on a new facet of bismuth Hsu, Chuang-Han; Zhou, Xiaoting; Chang, Tay-Rong Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 116, Issue 27 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1900527116	journal	June 2019
Resolving the topological classification of bismuth with topological defects Nayak, Abhay Kumar; Reiner, Jonathan; Queiroz, Raquel Science Advances, Vol. 5, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax6996	journal	November 2019
Interacting multi-channel topological boundary modes in a quantum Hall valley system Randeria, Mallika T.; Agarwal, Kartiek; Feldman, Benjamin E. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1902.02790	text	January 2019
Resolving the Topological Classification of Bismuth with Topological Defects Nayak, Abhay Kumar; Reiner, Jonathan; Queiroz, Raquel arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1903.00880	text	January 2019
A modular ultra-high vacuum millikelvin scanning tunneling microscope Wong, Dillon; Jeon, Sangjun; Nuckolls, Kevin P. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1910.08073	text	January 2019

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