We discuss how the braiding properties of Laughlin quasiparticles in quantum Hall states can be understood within a one-dimensional formalism we proposed earlier. In this formalism, the two-dimensional space of the Hall liquid is identified with the phase space of a one-dimensional lattice system, and localized Laughlin quasiholes can be understood as coherent states of lattice solitons. The formalism makes comparatively little use of the detailed structure of Laughlin wave functions, and may offer ways to be generalized to non-Abelian states.
We discuss how the braiding properties of Laughlin quasiparticles in quantum Hall states can be understood within a one-dimensional formalism we proposed earlier. In this formalism, the two-dimensional space of the Hall liquid is identified with the phase space of a one-dimensional lattice system, and localized Laughlin quasiholes can be understood as coherent states of lattice solitons. The formalism makes comparatively little use of the detailed structure of Laughlin wave functions, and may offer ways to be generalized to non-Abelian states.
In a Laughlin fractional quantum Hall state, one- and two-quasihole states can be obtained by diagonalizing the many-body Hamiltonian with a trapping potential or, for larger systems, from the linear combination of the edge Jack polynomials. The quasihole states live entirely in the subspace of the lowest-energy branch in the energy spectrum with a fixed number of orbits, or a hard-wall confinement. The reduction in the Hilbert space dimension facilitates the study of time evolution of the quasihole states after, say, the removal of the trapping potential. We explore the quench dynamics under a harmonic external potential, which rotates the quasiholes in the droplet, and discuss the effect of long-range interaction and more realistic confinement. Accurate evaluation of the mutual statistics phase of anyons for a wide range of anyon separation can be achieved from the Berry-phase calculation.
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.
Fractional quantum Hall systems are often described by model wave functions, which are the ground states of pure systems with short-range interaction. A primary example is the Laughlin wave function, which supports Abelian quasiparticles with fractionalized charge. In the presence of disorder, the wave function of the ground state is expected to deviate from the Laughlin form. We study the disorder-driven collapse of the quantum Hall state by analyzing the evolution of the ground state and the single-quasihole state. In particular, we demonstrate that the quasihole tunneling amplitude can signal the fractional quantum Hall phase to insulator transition.
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.
The quantum Hall effect (QHE) is a cornerstone of topological physics, inspiring extensive explorations of its high-dimensional generalizations such as experimental realizations in synthetic systems including cold atoms, photonic lattices, and metamaterials. However, the many-body effect in the higher dimensional QHE system remains poorly understood. We explore this problem by formulating the microscopic wave functions on a four-dimensional sphere inspired by Laughlin's seminal work. Employing a generalized pseudopotential framework, we derive an exact microscopic Hamiltonian consisting of two-body projection operators that annihilate the microscopic wave functions. Diagonalizations on finite system sizes show that the quasihole states remain zero energy while the quasiparticle states exhibit a finite gap, in consistency with an incompressible state. Furthermore, the pair distribution is calculated to substantiate the liquidlike nature of the wave function. Our Letter provides a preliminary understanding to the fractional quantum Hall states in high dimensions.
The quantum Hall effect has been the prototypical example for many emerging fields of Physics, including the study of topological phases of matter, topological order, and topological insulators. The objects of interest in this thesis are anyons, which are elementary excitations in fractional quantum Hall (FQH) fluids. Anyons are quasiparticles with fractional charge and fractional statistics. The latter prop- erty makes it a subject of immense interest due to application in fault-tolerant quantum computing. Here, we employ a perspective that anyons are the appro- priate degree of freedom to describe the relevant physics of FQH systems. This is because when a topological phase is assumed and the energy gap goes to infinity, anyons (“quasiholes”) are the only possible elementary excitations, since they are not energetically punished by the correspondng model Hamiltonian. With respect to a realistic Hamiltonian, however, this choice of degree of freedom depends on the exact effective interaction in the system. For example, while the Laughlin state is the model state at filling factor n + 1/3 (where n is some integer), when the effective electron-electron interaction is more long-ranged, the quasiholes of a Gaffnian state may be excited and become the better degree of freedom to describe physics in the same filling factor. This perspective results in a surprising observa- tion that a Laughlin quasihole may fractionalize under certain conditions, leading to a quasiparticle of charge e/6 that can potentially be detected in experiments. Another important aspect of anyons is their intrinsic spin and the corresponding spin-statistics relation, which must account for the fact that FQH anyons are not point particles, but objects with finite sizes and intricate internal structures. Our investigation leads to a rigorous derivation of the general spin-statistics relation for anyons in Abelian FQH phases. Furthermore, we show it is possible to fully capture the important features of the statistics by a conformal Hilbert space (CHS) description. Our analysis provides the necessary tools to study such geometric effects, which we use to investigate how disorder in a realistic system may affect different experimental schemes for measuring anyon statistics.