  Strongly-correlated two-dimensional electrons in coupled semiconductor
bilayers display remarkable broken symmetry many-body states under accessible
and controllable experimental conditions. In the cases of continuous quantum
phase transitions soft collective modes drive the transformations that link
distinct ground states of the electron double layers. In this paper we consider
results showing that resonant inelastic light scattering methods detect soft
collective modes of the double layers and probe their evolution with
temperature and magnetic field. The light scattering experiments offer venues
of research of fundamental interactions and continuous quantum phase
transitions in low-dimensional electron liquids.
