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A colorful approach to the fractional quantum Hall effect

Nicolas Regnault

Published Jan 26, 2009• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The different types of fractional quantum Hall effect may be described in terms of multi-color quantum liquids. This is the result of a trial wave function approach which yields a complementary vision of the fractional quantum Hall effect. Indeed, each color group of two-dimensional particles in a strong magnetic field forms a Laughlin liquid. However, in a typical system, there is only one type of particles, say gray, and the colors need to be viewed as an artificial marking. In order to get rid of these artificial colors, we have proposed a procedure which renders all particles gray again. This may be viewed as taking a black-and-white photo of a colorful painting. Amazingly, the black-and-white photo reveals an internal structure of the quantum liquid - it consists of distinct droplets the number of particles of which is that of the original colors. The performed numerical calculations indicate that this structure may be a common feature of the different types of fractional quantum Hall states, such as the composite-fermion states or else the 5/2 state with its exotic excitations.

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The different types of fractional quantum Hall effect may be described in terms of multi-color quantum liquids. This is the result of a trial wave function approach which yields a complementary vision of the fractional quantum Hall effect. Indeed, each color group of two-dimensional particles in a strong magnetic field forms a Laughlin liquid. However, in a typical system, there is only one type of particles, say gray, and the colors need to be viewed as an artificial marking. In order to get rid of these artificial colors, we have proposed a procedure which renders all particles gray again. This may be viewed as taking a black-and-white photo of a colorful painting. Amazingly, the black-and-white photo reveals an internal structure of the quantum liquid - it consists of distinct droplets the number of particles of which is that of the original colors. The performed numerical calculations indicate that this structure may be a common feature of the different types of fractional quantum Hall states, such as the composite-fermion states or else the 5/2 state with its exotic excitations.
The fractional quantum Hall effect was experimentally discovered in 1982. It was observed that the Hall conductivity σyx of a two-dimensional electron system is quantized, σyx=e2/3h, in the vicinity of the Landau level filling factor ν=1/3. In 1983, Laughlin proposed a trial many-body wave function, which he claimed described a “new state of matter”—a homogeneous incompressible liquid with fractionally charged quasiparticles. Here, I develop an exact diagonalization theory that allows one to calculate the energy and other physical properties of the ground and excited states of a system of N two-dimensional Coulomb interacting electrons in a strong magnetic field. I analyze the energies, electron densities, and other physical properties of the systems with N≤7 electrons continuously as a function of magnetic field in the range 1/4≲ν<1. The results show that both the ground and excited states of the system resemble a sliding Wigner crystal whose parameters are influenced by the magnetic field. Energy gaps in the many-particle spectra appear and disappear as the magnetic field changes. I also calculate the physical properties of the ν=1/3 Laughlin state for N≤8 and compare the results with the exact ones. This comparison, as well as an analysis of some other statements published in the literature, show that the Laughlin state and its fractionally charged excitations do not describe the physical reality, neither at small N nor in the thermodynamic limit. The results obtained shed new light on the nature of the ground and excited states in the fractional quantum Hall effect.
Motivated by the structure of the quasiparticle wavefunction in the composite fermion (CF) theory for fractional quantum Hall filling factor [Formula: see text] (m odd), I consider a suitable quasiparticle operator in differential form, as a modified form of Laughlin's quasiparticle operator, that reproduces quasiparticle wave function as predicted in the CF theory, without a priori assumption of the presence of CFs. I further consider the conjugate of this operator as quasihole operator for obtaining a novel quasihole wave function for 1/m state. Each of these wave functions is interpreted as expelling an electron into a different Hilbert subspace from the original Hilbert space of the Laughlin condensate while still maintaining its correlation (although changed) with the electrons in the condensate such that the expelled electron behaves as a CF with respect to the electrons in the condensate. With this interpretation, I show that the ground state wavefunctions for general states at filling fractions [Formula: see text], respectively, can be constructed as coherent superposition of n coupled Laughlin condensates and their 'conjugates', formed at different Hilbert subspaces. The corresponding wave functions, specially surprising for [Formula: see text] sequence of states, are identical with those proposed in the theory of noninteracting CFs. The states which were considered as fractional quantum Hall effect of interacting CFs, can also be treated in the same footing as for the prominent sequences of states describing as the coupled condensates among which one is a non-Laughlin condensate in a different Hilbert subspace. Further, I predict that the half filling of the lowest Landau level is a quantum critical point for phase transition between two topologically distinct phases each corresponding to a family of states: one consists of large number of coupled Laughlin condensates of filling factor 1/3 and the other corresponds to large number of coupled conjugate Laughlin condensates of filling factor 1, which may be distinguished, respectively, by the absence and presence of upstream edge modes.
The fractional quantum Hall fluid is a two-dimensional quantum fluid of electrons subject to a strong magnetic field at low temperatures.Neutral excitations in a fractional quantum Hall droplet define the incompressibility gap of the topological phase.Among these states, there are some specific modes in the long-wavelength limit that can be understood as "spin-2 gravitons".In this thesis, we will introduce a set of analytical results for the energy gap of the graviton modes for model Hamiltonians in the thermodynamic limit, which is governed by a well-defined and universal characteristic tensor.These results can help to construct model Hamiltonians for the graviton modes of different FQH phases and elucidate a hierarchical structure of conformal Hilbert spaces (null spaces of model Hamiltonians) containing the graviton modes and their corresponding ground states.An isomorphism can be defined for these conformal Hilbert spaces, and the mapping between them can be regarded as a more rigorous and general reinterpretation of the composite fermionization of FQH states, with naturally emergent composite fermions (each consisting of one electron and an even number of fluxes).The results from exact diagonalization will be shown, which confirm that for gapped phases, low-lying neutral excitations can undergo a phase transition even when the ground state remains in the same phase.Furthermore, the gaplessness of the Gaffnian state could be testified based on this formalism with further numerical experiments.Recently there has been numerical evidence implying the signature of multiple graviton modes.We will introduce the microscopic theory for the emergence of multiple gravitons in fractional quantum Hall droplets based on composite fermionization and the well-defined particle-hole conjugate within a specific conformal Hilbert space.This reveals the dynamical nature of this phenomenon and provides theoretical insights into the chirality and the "merging and splitting" behaviors of the graviton modes.The experimental relevance of multiple graviton modes will be discussed.The microscopic theory of gravitons can also provide valuable insights into the field-theoretical approaches.
Strongly interacting topological matter exhibits fundamentally new phenomena with potential applications in quantum information technology. Emblematic instances are fractional quantum Hall states, where the interplay of magnetic fields and strong interactions gives rise to fractionally charged quasi-particles, long-ranged entanglement, and anyonic exchange statistics. Progress in engineering synthetic magnetic fields has raised the hope to create these exotic states in controlled quantum systems. However, except for a recent Laughlin state of light, preparing fractional quantum Hall states in engineered systems remains elusive. Here, we realize a fractional quantum Hall (FQH) state with ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. The state is a lattice version of a bosonic ν=1/2ν=1/2ν=1/2 Laughlin state with two particles on sixteen sites. This minimal system already captures many hallmark features of Laughlin-type FQH states: we observe a suppression of two-body interactions, we find a distinctive vortex structure in the density correlations, and we measure a fractional Hall conductivity of σH/σ0=0.6(2)σ_\text{H}/σ_0= 0.6(2)σH​/σ0​=0.6(2) via the bulk response to a magnetic perturbation. Furthermore, by tuning the magnetic field we map out the transition point between the normal and the FQH regime through a spectroscopic probe of the many-body gap. Our work provides a starting point for exploring highly entangled topological matter with ultracold atoms.
A scaling procedure on the particle number is developed to construct the wave function of the uniform liquid ground state of the two-dimensional electron system in a strong magnetic field. When the filling factor is equal to the inverse of an odd number, this wave function is the correlated basis function introduced by Laughlin. In more general cases, when the filling factor is equal to a rational number, this wave function also can be regarded as a Laughlin wave function on the scale of a certain cluster. By this procedure, we can prove that an energy gap is always present between such a uniform liquid ground state and the excited states when the filling factor is equal to a rational number.
The eigenstates of interacting electrons in the fractional quantum Hall phase typically form fairly well-defined bands in the energy space. We study systems of six and eight electrons for filling factor 3/7>\ensuremath{\nu}> 2) / 7 and show that composite fermion theory gives insight into the origin of these bands and provides an accurate and complete microscopic description of the strongly correlated many-body states in the low-energy bands. This implies that, somewhat like in Landau's Fermi liquid theory, there is a one-to-one analogy between the low-energy Hilbert space of strongly interacting electrons in the fractional quantum Hall effect and that of weakly interacting electrons in the integer quantum Hall effect.