Dynamical Tunneling Blockade in Layer-Pseudospin Ferromagnets

Abstract

Double-layer systems with narrow or flat electronic bands may exhibit spontaneous interlayer coherence, described by a layer-pseudospin ferromagnetic order parameter. In modern realizations of layer-pseudospin ferromagnets, the electrons carry additional valley degeneracies, endowing each layer with a valley-pseudospin degree of freedom. We study their nonequilibrium steady states driven by a static interlayer voltage bias in the presence of interlayer tunneling. While in the low-bias regime, the system is in a static state with parallel valley pseudospins between the two layers, we show that in the high-bias regime, the dynamical precession of the layer-pseudospin stabilizes the valley pseudospins in the antiparallel configuration, strongly suppressing the interlayer tunneling. This dynamical tunneling blockade leads to an absence of ac current and a sharp drop of the dc tunneling current to a tiny value, in stark contrast to conventional quantum Hall double layers.