Composite Fermions with Tunable Fermi Contour Anisotropy

The composite fermion formalism elegantly describes some of the most fascinating behaviors of interacting two-dimensional carriers at low temperatures and in strong perpendicular magnetic fields. In this framework, carriers minimize their energy by attaching two flux quanta and forming new quasiparticles, the so-called composite fermions. Thanks to the flux attachment, when a Landau level is half-filled, the composite fermions feel a vanishing effective magnetic field and possess a Fermi surface with a well-defined Fermi contour. Our measurements in a high-quality two-dimensional hole system confined to a GaAs quantum well demonstrate that a parallel magnetic field can significantly distort the hole-flux composite fermion Fermi contour.