The fractional quantum Hall effect has, since its discovery around 30 years ago, been a vivid field of research—both experimentally and theoretically. In this thesis we investigate certain non-abelian quantum Hall states by mapping the two-dimensional system onto a thin torus, where the problem becomes effectively one-dimensional and hopping is suppressed, meaning that the classical electrostatic interaction dominates. The approach assists with a simplified view of ground states and their degeneracies, as well as of the nature of the fractionally charged, minimal excitations of the corresponding quantum Hall states. Similar models are also relevant for cold atoms trapped in one-dimensional optical lattices, where interaction parameters are available for tuning, which opens up for realizing interesting lattice states in controllable environments. The diverse applicability of the one-dimensional electrostatic lattice hamiltonian motivates the exploration of the systems and models treated in this work. In the absence of hopping or tunneling, the low-energy behavior of the one-dimensional lattice system is ultimately dependent on the nature of the electrostatic interaction present. For ordinary interactions such as Coulomb, the ground state at particle filling fraction ν= p/q has a well-known q-fold center-of-mass degeneracy and the elementary excitations are domain walls of fractional charge e* = ±e/q. These appear in abelian quantum Hall systems and are known since earlier. In this work, we show how other types of interaction give rise to increased ground state degeneracies and, as a result, to the emergence of split fractional charges recognized from non- abelian quantum Hall systems.
The fractional quantum Hall effect has, since its discovery around 30 years ago, been a vivid field of research—both experimentally and theoretically. In this thesis we investigate certain non-abelian quantum Hall states by mapping the two-dimensional system onto a thin torus, where the problem becomes effectively one-dimensional and hopping is suppressed, meaning that the classical electrostatic interaction dominates. The approach assists with a simplified view of ground states and their degeneracies, as well as of the nature of the fractionally charged, minimal excitations of the corresponding quantum Hall states. Similar models are also relevant for cold atoms trapped in one-dimensional optical lattices, where interaction parameters are available for tuning, which opens up for realizing interesting lattice states in controllable environments. The diverse applicability of the one-dimensional electrostatic lattice hamiltonian motivates the exploration of the systems and models treated in this work. In the absence of hopping or tunneling, the low-energy behavior of the one-dimensional lattice system is ultimately dependent on the nature of the electrostatic interaction present. For ordinary interactions such as Coulomb, the ground state at particle filling fraction ν= p/q has a well-known q-fold center-of-mass degeneracy and the elementary excitations are domain walls of fractional charge e* = ±e/q. These appear in abelian quantum Hall systems and are known since earlier. In this work, we show how other types of interaction give rise to increased ground state degeneracies and, as a result, to the emergence of split fractional charges recognized from non- abelian quantum Hall systems.
We study a 1D lattice Hamiltonian, relevant for a wide range of interesting physical systems like, e.g., the quantum-Hall system, cold atoms or molecules in optical lattices, and TCNQ salts. Through a tuning of the interaction parameters and a departure from a strictly convex interaction, nontrivial ground-state degeneracies and fractionally charged excitations emerge. The excitations, being a generalization of the fractional charges known from the fractional quantum-Hall effect, appear as domain walls between inequivalent ground states and carry the charge +e/mq or -e/mq, where m is an integer and associated with the specified interaction, and v = p/q is the filling fraction in the lattice. The description points at an interesting resemblance to states connected to non-Abelian statistics, which is central for the concept of topological quantum computing.
The fractional quantum Hall (FQH) effect plays a prominent role in the study of topological phases of matter and of strongly correlated electron systems in general. FQH systems have been demonstrated to show many interesting novel properties such as fractional charges, and are believed to harbor even more intriguing phenomena such as fractional statistics. However, there remain many interesting questions to be addressed in this regime. The work reported in this thesis aims to push the envelope of our understanding of the low-energy properties of FQH states using microscopic principles. In the first part of the thesis, we present a systematic perturbative approach to study excitations in the thin cylinder/torus limit of the quantum Hall states. The approach is applied to the Haldane-Rezayi and Gaffnian quantum Hall states, which are both expected to have gapless excitations in the usual two-dimensional thermodynamic limit. For the Haldane-Rezayi state, we confirm that gapless excitations are present also in the ``one-dimensional'' thermodynamic limit of an infinite thin cylinder, in agreement with earlier considerations based on the wave functions alone. In contrast, we identify the lowest excitations of the Gaffnian state in the thin cylinder limit, and conclude that they are gapped, using a combination of perturbative and numerical means. We discuss possible scenarios for the cross-over between the two-dimensional and the one-dimensional thermodynamic limit in this case. In the second part of the thesis, we study the low energy spectral properties of positive center-of-mass conserving two-body Hamiltonians as they arise in models of FQH states. Starting from the observation that positive many-body Hamiltonians must have ground state energies that increase monotonously in particle number, we explore what general additional constraints can be obtained for two-body interactions with "center-of-mass conservation" symmetry, both in the presence and absence of particle-hole symmetry. We find general bounds that constrain the evolution of the ground state energy with particle number, and in particular constrain the chemical potential at T=0. Special attention is given to Hamiltonians with zero modes, in which case similar bounds on the first excited state are also obtained, using a duality property. In this case, in particular an upper bound on the charge gap is also obtained. We further comment on center-of-mass and relative-decomposition in disk geometry within the framework of second quantization.
The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE), now entering it's fourth decade, continues to draw attention from the condensed matter community. New experiments in recent years are raising hopes that it will be possible to observe quasi-particles with non-abelian anyonic statistics. These particles could form the building blocks of a quantum computer. The quantum Hall states have topologically protected energy gaps to the low-lying set of excitations. This topological order is not a locally measurable quantity but rather a non-local object, and it is one of the keys to it's stability. From an early stage understanding of the FQHE has been facilitate by constructing trial wave functions. The topological classification of these wave functions have given further insight to the nature of the FQHE. An early, and successful, wave function construction for filling fractions ν=p/(2p+1) was that of composite fermions on planar and spherical geometries. Recently, new developments using conformal field theory have made it possible to also construct the full Haldane-Halperin hierarchy wave functions on planar and spherical geometries. In this thesis we extend this construction to a toroidal geometry, i.e. a flat surface with periodic boundary conditions. One of the defining features of topological states of matter in two dimensions is that the ground state is not unique on surfaces with non trivial topology, such as a torus. The archetypical example is the fractional quantum Hall effect, where a state at filling fraction ν=p/q, has at least a q-fold degeneracy on a torus. This has been shown explicitly for a few cases, such as the Laughlin states and the the Moore-Read states, by explicit construction of candidate electron wave functions with good overlap with numerically found states. In this thesis, we construct explicit torus wave functions for a large class of experimentally important quantum liquids, namely the chiral hierarchy states in the lowest Landau level. These states, which includes the prominently observed positive Jain sequence at filling fractions ν=p/(2p+1), are characterized by having boundary modes with only one chirality. Our construction relies heavily on previous work that expressed the hierarchy wave functions on a plane or a sphere in terms of correlation functions in a conformal field theory. This construction can be taken over to the torus when care is taken to ensure correct behaviour under the modular transformations that leave the geometry of the torus unchanged. Our construction solves the long standing problem of engineering torus wave functions for multi-component many-body states. Since the resulting expressions are rather complicated, we have carefully compared the simplest example, that of ν=2/5, with numerically found wave functions. We have found an extremely good overlap for arbitrary values of the modular parameter τ, that describes the geometry of the torus. Having explicit torus wave functions allows us to use the methods developed by Read and Read \\& Rezayi to numerically compute the quantum Hall viscosity. Hall viscosity is conjectured to be a topologically protected macroscopic transport coefficient characterizing the quantum Hall state. It is related to the shift of the same QH-fluid when it is put on a sphere. The good agreement with the theoretical prediction for the 2/5 state strongly suggests that our wave functions encodes all relevant topologically information. We also consider the Hall viscosity in the limit of a very thin torus. There we find that the viscosity changes as we approach the thin torus limit. Because of this we study the Laughlin state in that limit and see how the change in viscosity arises from a change in the Hamiltonian hopping elements. Finally we conclude that there are both qualitative and quantitative difference between the thin and the square torus. Thus, one has to be careful when interpreting results in the thin torus limit.
The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE), now entering it's fourth decade, continues to draw attention from the condensed matter community. New experiments in recent years are raising hopes that it will be possible to observe quasi-particles with non-abelian anyonic statistics. These particles could form the building blocks of a quantum computer.The quantum Hall states have topologically protected energy gaps to the low-lying set of excitations. This topological order is not a locally measurable quantity but rather a non-local object, and it is one of the keys to it's stability. From an early stage understanding of the FQHE has been facilitate by constructing trial wave functions. The topological classification of these wave functions have given further insight to the nature of the FQHE.An early, and successful, wave function construction for filling fractions ν=p/(2p+1) was that of composite fermions on planar and spherical geometries. Recently, new developments using conformal field theory have made it possible to also construct the full Haldane-Halperin hierarchy wave functions on planar and spherical geometries. In this thesis we extend this construction to a toroidal geometry, i.e. a flat surface with periodic boundary conditions.One of the defining features of topological states of matter in two dimensions is that the ground state is not unique on surfaces with non trivial topology, such as a torus. The archetypical example is the fractional quantum Hall effect, where a state at filling fraction ν=p/q, has at least a q-fold degeneracy on a torus. This has been shown explicitly for a few cases, such as the Laughlin states and the the Moore-Read states, by explicit construction of candidate electron wave functions with good overlap with numerically found states. In this thesis, we construct explicit torus wave functions for a large class of experimentally important quantum liquids, namely the chiral hierarchy states in the lowest Landau level. These states, which includes the prominently observed positive Jain sequence at filling fractions ν=p/(2p+1), are characterized by having boundary modes with only one chirality.Our construction relies heavily on previous work that expressed the hierarchy wave functions on a plane or a sphere in terms of correlation functions in a conformal field theory. This construction can be taken over to the torus when care is taken to ensure correct behaviour under the modular transformations that leave the geometry of the torus unchanged. Our construction solves the long standing problem of engineering torus wave functions for multi-component many-body states. Since the resulting expressions are rather complicated, we have carefully compared the simplest example, that of ν=2/5, with numerically found wave functions. We have found an extremely good overlap for arbitrary values of the modular parameter τ, that describes the geometry of the torus.Having explicit torus wave functions allows us to use the methods developed by Read and Read \& Rezayi to numerically compute the quantum Hall viscosity. Hall viscosity is conjectured to be a topologically protected macroscopic transport coefficient characterizing the quantum Hall state. It is related to the shift of the same QH-fluid when it is put on a sphere. The good agreement with the theoretical prediction for the 2/5 state strongly suggests that our wave functions encodes all relevant topologically information.We also consider the Hall viscosity in the limit of a very thin torus. There we find that the viscosity changes as we approach the thin torus limit. Because of this we study the Laughlin state in that limit and see how the change in viscosity arises from a change in the Hamiltonian hopping elements. Finally we conclude that there are both qualitative and quantitative difference between the thin and the square torus. Thus, one has to be careful when interpreting results in the thin torus limit.
We analyze the non-Abelian Read–Rezayi quantum Hall states on the torus, where it is natural to employ a mapping of the many-body problem onto a one-dimensional lattice model. On the thin torus—the Tao–Thouless (TT) limit—the interacting many-body problem is exactly solvable. The Read–Rezayi states at filling ν = k /( kM +2) are known to be exact ground states of a local repulsive k +1-body interaction, and in the TT limit this is manifested in that all states in the ground state manifold have exactly k particles on any kM +2 consecutive sites. For the two-body correlations of these states also imply that there is no more than one particle on M adjacent sites. The fractionally charged quasiparticles and quasiholes appear as domain walls between the ground states, and we show that the number of distinct domain wall patterns gives rise to the nontrivial degeneracies, required by the non-Abelian statistics of these states. In the second part of the paper we consider the quasihole degeneracies from a conformal field theory (CFT) perspective, and show that the counting of the domain wall patterns maps one to one on the CFT counting via the fusion rules. Moreover we extend the CFT analysis to topologies of higher genus.
Following an earlier construction of exactly soluble lattice models for Abelian fractional topological insulators in two and three dimensions, we construct here an exactly soluble lattice model for a non-Abelian $\ensuremath{\nu}=1$ quantum Hall state and a non-Abelian topological insulator in two dimensions. We show that both models are topologically ordered, exhibiting fractionalized charge, ground-state degeneracy on the torus, and protected edge modes. The models feature non-Abelian vortices which carry fractional electric charge in the quantum Hall case and spin in the topological insulator case. We analyze the statistical properties of the excitations in detail and discuss the possibility of extending this construction to three-dimensional non-Abelian topological insulators.