Skyrmions and the ν=1 Quantum Hall Ferromagnet

M.J. Manfra, B.B. Goldberg Dept. of Physics, Boston University, Boston MA 02215, USA L. Pfeiffer and K. West Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, USA

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Recent experimental and theoretical investigations have resulted in a shift in our understanding of the ν=1 quantum Hall state. There now exists a wealth of evidence that the excitation gap and the resulting quasiparticle spectrum at ν=1 are due predominately to the ferromagnetic many-body exchange interaction. A great variety of experimentally observed correlations at ν= 1 cannot be incorporated into a perturbative expansion around the single-particle model, a scheme long thought to describe the integral quantum Hall effect at filling factor 1. Theorists now refer to the ν=1 state as the quantum Hall ferromagnet. In this paper we review recent theoretical and experimental progress and detail our own optical investigations of the ν= 1 quantum Hall regime. The technique of magneto-absorption spectroscopy has proven to be powerful a probe of the occupancy of the lowest Landau level in the regime of 0.7<ν<1.3 about the spin gap. Additionally, we have performed simultaneous measurements of the absorption, photoluminescence and photoluminescence excitation spectra of the ν=1 state in order to elucidate the role of excitonic and relaxation effects in optical spectroscopy in the quantum Hall regime.

DOI: 10.12693/APhysPolA.92.621 PACS numbers: 73.40.Hm, 78.66.-w, 73.20.Mf, 71.70.Gm, 73.20.Dx