Fractional quantum Hall states in continuum and lattice systems

Layla Hormozi

Masaaki Nakamura, Zheng-Yuan Wang

Ivan Dario Jimenez Rodriguez, Anne E. B. Nielsen

There has been significant interest in recent years in finding fractional quantum Hall physics in lattice models, but it is not always clear how these models connect to the corresponding models in continuum systems. Here we introduce a family of models that is able to interpolate between a recently proposed set of lattice models with Laughlin-like ground states constructed from conformal field theory and models with ground states that are practically the usual bosonic/fermionic Laughlin states in the continuum. Both the ground state and the Hamiltonian are known analytically, and we find that the Hamiltonian in the continuum limit does not coincide with the usual delta interaction Hamiltonian for the Laughlin states. We introduce quasiholes into the models and show analytically that their braiding properties are as expected if the quasiholes are screened. We demonstrate screening numerically for the 1/3 Laughlin model and find that the quasiholes are slightly smaller in the continuum than in the lattice. Finally, we compute the effective magnetic field felt by the quasiholes and show that it is close to uniform when approaching the continuum limit. The techniques presented here to interpolate between the lattice and the continuum can also be applied to other fractional quantum Hall states that are constructed from conformal field theory.

Shuo Yang, Kai Sun, S. Das Sarma

By numerical exact diagonalization techniques, we obtain the quantum phase diagram of the lattice fractional quantum Hall (FQH) systems in the presence of quenched disorder. By implementing an array of local potential traps representing the disorder, we show that the system undergoes a series of quantum phase transitions as the disorder and/or the interaction is tuned. As the strength of potential traps is increased, the FQH state turns into a compressible liquid and then into a topologically trivial insulator. We use the numerically calculated energy gap, quantum degeneracy, the Chern number, the entanglement spectrum, and the fidelity metric to identify various quantum phases. The connection to continuum FQH effects is also discussed.

Anne E. B. Nielsen, Germán Sierra, J. I. Cirac

Nicolas Regnault