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Voinea, C. orcid.org/0000-0002-8086-3791, Zhu, W., Regnault, N. et al. (1 more author) (2026) Critical Majorana Fermion at a Topological Quantum Hall Bilayer Transition. Physical Review Letters, 136 (7). 076601. ISSN: 0031-9007
Abstract
Quantum Hall bilayers are a uniquely tunable platform that can realize continuous transitions between distinct topological phases of matter. One prominent example is the transition between the Halperin state and the Moore-Read Pfaffian, long predicted to host a critical theory of Majorana fermions but so far not verified in unbiased microscopic simulations. Using the fuzzy-sphere regularization, we identify the low-energy spectrum at this transition with the 3D gauged Majorana conformal field theory. We show that the transition is driven by the closing of the neutral fermion gap, and we directly extract the operator content in both integer and half-integer spin sectors. Our results resolve the long-standing question of the nature of a topological phase transition in a setting relevant to quantum Hall experiments, while also providing a realization of emergent fermionic fields on the fuzzy sphere, previously limited to bosonic fields.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Authors/Creators: |
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| Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This item is protected by copyright. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Dates: |
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| Institution: | The University of Leeds |
| Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Physics and Astronomy (Leeds) |
| Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EPSRC Accounts Payable EP/Z533634/1 EPSRC Accounts Payable UKRI1337 Leverhulme Trust RL-2019-015 |
| Date Deposited: | 26 Mar 2026 11:13 |
| Last Modified: | 26 Mar 2026 11:21 |
| Status: | Published |
| Publisher: | American Physical Society |
| Identification Number: | 10.1103/mztz-fyk3 |
| Related URLs: | |
| Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:239325 |
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Critical Majorana fermion at a topological quantum Hall bilayer transition. (deposited 26 Mar 2026 11:19)
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