The Fractional Quantum Hall States of Dirac Electrons in Graphene

Abstract

We have investigated the fractional quantum Hall states for the Dirac electrons in a graphene layer in different Landau levels. The relativistic nature of the energy dispersion relation of the electrons in the graphene significantly modifies the inter-electron interactions. This results in a specific dependence of the ground state energy and the energy gaps for electrons on the Landau level index. For the valley-polarized states, i.e. at ν=1/m, m being an odd integer, the energy gaps have the largest values in the n=1 Landau level. For the valley-unpolarized states, e.g., for the 2/3 state, the energy gaps are suppressed for the n=1 Landau level as compared to the n=0 level. For both the n=1 and n=0 Landau levels the ground state of the 2/3 system is fully valley-unpolarized.