Evidence for a finite temperature phase transition in a bilayer quantum Hall system

A. R. Champagne, J. P. Eisenstein, L. N. Pfeiffer, K. W. West

Published 2007-09-05, updated 2008-01-25Version 2

We study the Josephson-like interlayer tunneling signature of the strongly correlated $\nu_T = 1$ quantum Hall phase in bilayer two-dimensional electron systems as a function of the layer separation, temperature and interlayer charge imbalance. Our results offer strong evidence that a finite temperature phase transition separates the interlayer coherent phase from incoherent phases which lack strong interlayer correlations. The transition temperature is dependent on both the layer spacing and charge imbalance between the layers.