We study the ground state and low-energy excitations of fractional quantum Hall systems on a disk at a filling fraction nu = 5/2, with Coulomb interaction and a background confining potential. We find the Moore-Read ground state is stable within a finite but narrow window in parameter space. The corresponding low-energy excitations contain a fermionic branch and a bosonic branch, with widely different velocities. A short-range repulsive potential can stabilize a charge +e/4 quasihole at the center, leading to a different edge excitation spectrum due to the change of boundary conditions for Majorana fermions, clearly indicating the non-Abelian nature of the quasihole.
We study the ground state and low-energy excitations of fractional quantum Hall systems on a disk at a filling fraction nu = 5/2, with Coulomb interaction and a background confining potential. We find the Moore-Read ground state is stable within a finite but narrow window in parameter space. The corresponding low-energy excitations contain a fermionic branch and a bosonic branch, with widely different velocities. A short-range repulsive potential can stabilize a charge +e/4 quasihole at the center, leading to a different edge excitation spectrum due to the change of boundary conditions for Majorana fermions, clearly indicating the non-Abelian nature of the quasihole.
We present a comprehensive numerical study of a microscopic model of the fractional quantum Hall system at filling fraction $\ensuremath{\nu}=5∕2$, based on the disk geometry. Our model includes Coulomb interaction and a semirealistic confining potential. We also mix in a three-body interaction in some cases to help elucidate the physics. We obtain a phase diagram, discuss the conditions under which the ground state can be described by the Moore-Read state, and study its competition with neighboring stripe phases. We also study quasihole excitations and edge excitations in the Moore-Read-like state. From the evolution of the edge spectrum, we obtain the velocities of the charge and neutral edge modes, which turn out to be very different. This separation of velocities is a source of decoherence for a non-Abelian quasihole and/or quasiparticle (with charge $\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}e∕4$) when propagating at the edge; using numbers obtained from a specific set of parameters, we estimate the decoherence length to be around $4\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$. This sets an upper bound for the separation of the two point contacts in a double point-contact interferometer, designed to detect the non-Abelian nature of such quasiparticles. We also find a state that is a potential candidate for the recently proposed anti-Pfaffian state. We find the speculated anti-Pfaffian state is favored in weak confinement (smooth edge), while the Moore-Read Pfaffian state is favored in strong confinement (sharp edge).
In fractional quantum Hall systems, quasiparticles of fractional charge can tunnel between the edges at a quantum point contact. Such tunneling (or backscattering) processes contribute to charge transport and provide information on both the charge and statistics of the quasiparticles involved. Here, we study quasiparticle tunneling in the Moore-Read state, in which quasiparticles of charges e/4 (non-Abelian) and e/2 (Abelian) may coexist and both contribute to edge transport. On a disk geometry, we calculate the matrix elements for e/2 and e/4 quasiholes to tunnel through the bulk of the Moore-Read state, in an attempt to understand their relative importance. We find that the tunneling amplitude for charge e/2 quasihole is exponentially smaller than that for charge e/4 quasihole, and the ratio between them can be (partially) attributed to their charge difference. We find that including long-range Coulomb interaction only has a weak effect on the ratio. We discuss briefly the relevance of these results to recent tunneling and interferometry experiments at filling factor $\ensuremath{\nu}=5/2$.
For fractional quantum Hall states on a finite disk, we study the thermoelectric transport properties under the influence of the presence of an edge and its reconstruction. In a recent study on a torus [Phys. Rev. B 101, 241101(R) (2020)], Sheng and Fu found a universal non-Fermi liquid power-law scaling of the thermoelectric conductivity ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{xy}\ensuremath{\propto}{T}^{\ensuremath{\eta}}$ for the gapless composite Fermi liquid state. The exponent $\ensuremath{\eta}\ensuremath{\sim}0.5$ appears an independence of the filling factors and the details of the interactions. In the presence of an edge, we find the properties of the edge spectrum dominants the low-temperature behaviors and a nonuniversal scaling behavior in low temperature is observed. To consider individually the effect of the edge states, the real space entanglement spectrum of the model wave function, which contains only the spectrum of edge excitation is employed. Its spectrum energies could be tuned by varying the radius of the subsystem. In the non-Abelian Moore-Read state, the Majorana neutral edge mode is found to have more significant effects than that of the charge mode in the low temperature.
Non-Abelian excitations are an interesting feature of many fractional quantum Hall phases, including those phases described by the Moore-Read (or Pfaffian) wave function. However, the detection of the non-Abelian quasiparticles is challenging. Here, we consider a system described by the Moore-Read wave function and assume that impurity particles bind to its quasiholes. Then, the angular momentum of the impurities, reflected also by the impurity density, provides a useful witness of the physics of the non-Abelian excitations. By demanding that the impurities are constrained to the lowest Landau level, we are able to write down the corresponding many-body wave function describing both the Moore-Read liquid and the impurities. Through Monte Carlo sampling, we determine the impurity angular momentum, and we show that it suggests a quantum-statistical parameter $\ensuremath{\alpha}=a\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{-}b+P/2$ for the quasiholes, where $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ ranges from 0 for bosons to 1 for fermions. A reasonable agreement with the Monte Carlo results is obtained for a=1/4, b=1/8, and P=0,1 depending on the parity of the particle number in the Moore-Read liquid. This parity dependence of the angular momentum serves as an unambiguous demonstration of the non-Abelian nature of the excitations. In addition to the studies of excitations in the Moore-Read liquid, we also apply our scheme to Laughlin liquids, for which we focus on interacting bosonic impurities. With this, the impurities themselves form Laughlin states, which allows for a study of hierarchical fractional quantum Hall states.
We study the trapping of Abelian anyons (quasiholes and quasiparticles) by a local potential (e.g., induced by an atomic force microscopy tip) in a microscopic model of fractional quantum Hall liquids with long-range Coulomb interaction and edge confining potential. We find, in particular, that at Laughlin filling fraction $\ensuremath{\nu}=1∕3$, both quasihole and quasiparticle states can emerge as the ground state of the system in the presence of the trapping potential. As expected, we find that the presence of an Abelian quasihole has no effect on the edge spectrum of the quantum liquid, unlike in the non-Abelian case [X. Wan et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 256804 (2006)]. Although quasiholes and quasiparticles can emerge generically in the system, their stability depends on the strength of the confining potential and the strength and the range of the trapping potential. We discuss the relevance of the calculation to the high-accuracy generation and control of individual anyons in potential experiments, in particular, in the context of topological quantum computing.
We propose a method of realizing non-Abelian braiding of fractionalized quasiholes in the Laughlin fractional quantum Hall phase at ν=1/3 with realistic two-body interactions within the lowest Landau level. It is numerically shown that low-lying gapped excitations near ν=1/3 are contained almost entirely within the null space of the three-body Moore-Read model Hamiltonian. They are thus quantum fluids of non-Abelian quasiholes that are in principle physically accessible. In particular, Laughlin ground state can be described as a fluid of ``ψ-type" quasiholes formed by binding a magnetic flux with a Majorana fermion (MF), and the Laughlin quasiholes are described by the ``1-type'' quasiholes, which are magnetic fluxes without a MF attached. Within the Laughlin phase, Laughlin quasiholes can be locally fractionalized into non-Abelian quasiholes, when the strong attraction between them is overcome by properly designed one-body electronstatic trapping potentials. Extensive numerics with proper finite-size scaling corroborate this physical picture, and our study points to the possibility of realizing non-Abelian braiding within an Abelian topological phase in experiment without the need for fine-tuning realistic electron-electron interaction.