Fractional Excitonic Insulator

We argue that a correlated fluid of electrons and holes can exhibit a fractional quantum Hall effect at zero magnetic field analogous to the Laughlin state at filling $1/m$. We introduce a variant of the Laughlin wave function for electrons and holes and show that for $m=1$ it is the exact ground state of a free fermion model that describes $p_x+i{p}_y$ excitonic pairing. For $m>1$ we develop a simple composite fermion mean field theory, and we present evidence that our wave function correctly describes this phase. We derive an interacting Hamiltonian for which our wave function is the exact ground state, and we present physical arguments that the $m=3$ state can be realized in a system in which energy bands with angular momentum that differ by 3 cross at the Fermi energy. This leads to a gapless state with $(p_x+i{p}_y{)}^3$ excitonic pairing, which we argue is conducive to forming the fractional excitonic insulator in the presence of interactions. Prospects for numerics on model systems and band structure engineering to realize this phase in real materials are discussed.

Figure 1

Kosterlitz Thouless renormalization group flow diagram [34] for the plasma analogy of (1) and (2) as a function of fugacity $f$ and the coefficient of the Coulomb interaction, the bare value of which is controlled by $m$.