Direct Determination of the Topological Thermal Conductance via Local Power Measurement

Abstract

Thermal conductance measurements, sensitive to charge and chargeless energy flow, are evolving as an essential measurement technique in Condensed Matter Physics. For two-dimensional topological insulators, the measurements of the thermal Hall conductance, κxyT, and the longitudinal one κxxT, are crucial for the understanding of their underlying topological order. Such measurements are thus far lacking, even in the extensively studied quantum Hall effect (QHE) regime. Here, we report a new local power measurement technique that reveals the topological thermal Hall conductance (not the ubiquitous two-terminal one). For example, we find κxy~0 of the challenging ν = 2/3 particle-hole conjugated state. This is in contrast to the two-terminal measurement, which provides a non-universal value that depends on the extent of thermal equilibration between the counter-propagating edge modes. Moreover, we use this technique to study the power carried by the current fluctuations in a partitioned edge mode with an out-of-equilibrium distribution.