Vortex physics in the quantum hall bilayer

There exists a strong analogy between the quantum Hall bilayer system at total filling factor ν = 1 and a thin film superfluid, in which the groundstate is described as a condensate of particle-hole pairs. The analogy draws sup-port from experiments which display near dissipationless transport properties at low temperatures. However dissipation is always present at any accessible temperature, suggesting that in a proper description, unpaired vortex-like excitations must be present. The mechanism by which this hap-pens remains poorly understood. A key difference between the quantum Hall bilayer and simpler thin-film superfluids is that the vortices, more properly called merons in the former context, are charged objects. We demonstrate that a model in which disorder induces merons in the ground-state, through coupling to this charge, can naturally explain many of the observed imperfect superfluid properties.