Excitation gap of fractal quantum hall states in graphene

Abstract

In the presence of a magnetic field and an external periodic potential the Landau level spectrum of a two-dimensional electron gas exhibits a fractal pattern in the energy spectrum which is described as the Hofstadter’s butterfly. In this work, we develop a Hartree–Fock theory to deal with the electron-electron interaction in the Hofstadter’s butterfly state in a finite-size graphene with periodic boundary conditions, where we include both spin and valley degrees of freedom. We then treat the butterfly state as an electron crystal so that we could obtain the order parameters of the crystal in the momentum space and also in an infinite sample. A phase transition between the liquid phase and the fractal crystal phase can be observed. The excitation gaps obtained in the infinite sample is comparable to those in the finite-size study, and agree with a recent experimental observation.