Observation of fractional Chern insulators in a van der Waals heterostructure

Abstract

Topologically ordered phases are characterized by long-range quantum entanglement and fractional statistics rather than by symmetry breaking. First observed in a fractionally filled continuum Landau level, topological order has since been proposed to arise more generally at fractional filling of topologically non-trivial "Chern" bands. Here, we report the observation of gapped states at fractional filling of Harper-Hofstadter bands arising from the interplay of a magnetic field and a superlattice potential in a bilayer graphene/hexagonal boron nitride heterostructure. We observe new phases at fractional filling of bands with Chern indices $\mathcal{C} = -1, \pm 2,$ and $\pm 3$. Some of these, in $\mathcal{C}=-1$ and $\mathcal{C}=2$ bands, are characterized by fractional Hall conductance---they are `fractional Chern insulators' and constitute a new example of topological order beyond Landau levels.