Composite fermion duality for half-filled multicomponent Landau Levels

Abstract

We study the interplay of particle-hole symmetry and fermion-vortex duality in multicomponent half-filled Landau levels, such as quantum Hall gallium arsenide bilayers and graphene. For the $\nu{=}1/2{+}1/2$ bilayer, we show that particle-hole-symmetric interlayer Cooper pairing of composite fermions leads to precisely the same phase as the electron exciton condensate realized in experiments. This equivalence is easily understood by applying the recent Dirac fermion formulation of $\nu{=}1/2$ to two components. It can also be described by Halperin-Lee-Read composite fermions undergoing interlayer $p_x{+}ip_y$ pairing. An RG analysis showing strong instability to interlayer pairing at large separation $d\rightarrow \infty$ demonstrates that two initially-decoupled composite Fermi liquids can be smoothly tuned into the conventional bilayer exciton condensate without encountering a phase transition. We also discuss multicomponent systems relevant to graphene, derive related phases including a $Z_2$ gauge theory with spin-half visons, and argue for symmetry-enforced gaplessness under full SU$(N_f)$ flavor symmetry when the number of components $N_f$ is even.