Spin and the Coulomb gap in the half-filled lowest Landau level

Abstract

The Coulomb gap observed in tunneling between parallel two-dimensional electron systems, each at half-filling of the lowest Landau level, is found to depend sensitively on the presence of an in-plane magnetic field. Especially at low electron density, the width of the Coulomb gap at first increases sharply with in-plane field, but then abruptly levels off. This behavior appears to coincide with the known transition from partial to complete spin polarization of the half-filled lowest Landau level. The tunneling gap therefore opens a window onto the spin configuration of two-dimensional electron systems at high magnetic field.