The dominant interaction that pops into our mind when considering like charges constraint to move in a plane is no doubt the repulsive Coulomb interaction. It produces the celebrated fractional quantum Hall effect that continues to fascinate and whose appearance frequently acts as a Litmus test for the quality of emerging materials. However, every so often the ubiqui-tous Coulomb repulsion has to give way to physics that apparently involves local attractive interactions among our like charges instead. Electron pairing, mediated by electron phonon interactions and leading to superconductivity, would be an obvious example outside of the context of flatland. However, the mechanism mediating or delivering a local attractive interaction is commonly not that obvious. In this presentation instances of such local attraction physics in flatland without phonon involvement will be covered. We will address various techniques beyond simple magneto-transport that help us to unveil these local attractive interactions and its consequences. This physics is very fragile and its study has been the exclusive privilege of the very mature GaAs community so far. We will highlight that this is no longer true.
