Tuesday, December 18, 2012

1212.3846 (Patrick Maher et al.)

Evidence for a Spin Phase Transition at ν=0 in Bilayer Graphene    [PDF]

Patrick Maher, Cory R. Dean, Andrea F. Young, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Kenneth L. Shepard, James Hone, Philip Kim
The most celebrated property of the quantum spin Hall effect is the presence of spin-polarized counter-propagating edge states. This novel edge state configuration has also been predicted to occur in graphene when spin-split electron- and hole-like Landau levels are forced to cross at the edge of the sample. In particular, a quantum spin Hall analogue has been predicted at {\nu}=0 in bilayer graphene if the ground state is a spin ferromagnet. Previous studies have demonstrated that the bilayer {\nu}=0 state is an insulator in a perpendicular magnetic field, though the exact nature of this state has not been identified. Here we present measurements of the {\nu}=0 state in a dual-gated bilayer graphene device in tilted magnetic field. The application of an in-plane magnetic field and perpendicular electric field allows us to map out a full phase diagram of the {\nu}=0 state as a function of experimentally tunable parameters. At large in-plane magnetic field we observe a quantum phase transition to a metallic state with conductance of order 4e^2/h, consistent with predictions for the ferromagnet.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.3846

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