Half-filled Landau level, topological insulator surfaces, and three-dimensional quantum spin liquids

Abstract

We synthesize and partly review recent developments relating the physics of the half-filled Landau level in two dimensions to correlated surface states of topological insulators in three dimensions. The latter are in turn related to the physics of certain three-dimensional quantum spin liquid states. The resulting insights provide an interesting answer to the old question of how particle-hole symmetry is realized in composite fermion liquids. Specifically the metallic state at filling ν = 1/2—described originally in pioneering work by Halperin, Lee, and Read as a liquid of composite fermions—was proposed recently by Son to be described by a particle-hole symmetric effective field theory distinct from that in the prior literature. We show how the relation to topological insulator surface states leads to a physical understanding of the correctness of this proposal. We develop a simple picture of the particle-hole symmetric composite fermion through a modification of older pictures as electrically neutral “dipolar” particles. We revisit the phenomenology of composite fermi liquids (with or without particle-hole symmetry), and show that their heat/electrical transport dramatically violates the conventional Wiedemann-Franz law but satisfies a modified one. We also discuss the implications of these insights for finding physical realizations of correlated topological insulator surfaces.