The Anatomy of Fractional Quantum Hall States

Bogdan Andrei Bernevig, Nicolas Regnault

We deduce a new set of symmetries and relations between the coefficients of the expansion of Abelian and non-Abelian fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states in free (bosonic or fermionic) many-body states. Our rules allow us to build an approximation of a FQH model state with an overlap increasing with growing system size (that may sometimes reach unity) while using a fraction of the original Hilbert space. We prove these symmetries by deriving a previously unknown recursion formula for all the coefficients of the Slater expansion of the Laughlin, Read-Rezayi, and many other states (all Jacks multiplied by Vandermonde determinants), which completely removes the current need for diagonalization procedures for these model Hamiltonians.

Chyh-Hong Chern

Carolyn Zhang, Ashvin Vishwanath, Xiao-Gang Wen

For a given parent fractional quantum Hall (FQH) state at filling fraction $\ensuremath{\nu}$, the hierarchy construction produces FQH states at nearby filling fractions ${{\ensuremath{\nu}}_{n}}$ by condensing minimally charged quasiholes or quasiparticles of the parent state into their own FQH states. The hierarchy construction has been useful for relating families of FQH states and for the experimental identification of the topological order of parent states via the properties of daughter states. We reinterpret the hierarchy construction as a two-step procedure: stacking with a second FQH state and condensing a condensable algebra of bosons. This two-step procedure can be applied to both Abelian and non-Abelian FQH states, and it does not require calculations with a wave function. We show this construction reproduces the hierarchies for the Laughlin and Pfaffian states, and can be applied further to propose hierarchies for various non-Abelian FQH states.

Wade DeGottardi, Mohammad Hafezi

Parsa Bonderson, Johannes K. Slingerland

We generalize the fractional quantum Hall hierarchy picture to apply to arbitrary, possibly non-Abelian, fractional quantum Hall states. Applying this to the $\ensuremath{\nu}=5/2$ Moore-Read state, we construct explicit trial wave functions to describe the fractional quantum Hall effect in the second Landau level. The resulting hierarchy of states, which reproduces the filling fractions of all observed Hall conductance plateaus in the second Landau level, is characterized by electron pairing in the ground state and an excitation spectrum that includes non-Abelian anyons of the Ising type. We propose this as a unifying picture in which $p$-wave pairing characterizes the fractional quantum Hall effect in the second Landau level.

John J. Quinn, Arkadiusz Wójs, Kyung-Soo Yi +1 more