Paper detail

Helical quantum Hall phase in graphene on SrTiO$_3$

The ground state of charge neutral graphene under perpendicular magnetic field was predicted to be a quantum Hall topological insulator with a ferromagnetic order and spin-filtered, helical edge channels. In most experiments, however, an otherwise insulating state is observed and is accounted for by lattice-scale interactions that promote a broken-symmetry state with gapped bulk and edge excitations. We tuned the ground state of the graphene zeroth Landau level to the topological phase via a suitable screening of the Coulomb interaction with a SrTiO$_3$ high-$k$ dielectric substrate. We observed robust helical edge transport emerging at a magnetic field as low as 1 tesla and withstanding temperatures up to 110 kelvins over micron-long distances. This new and versatile graphene platform opens new avenues for spintronics and topological quantum computation.