Work

Beyond paired quantum Hall states: Parafermions and incompressible states in the first excited Landau level

Year: 1999

Type: article

Abstract: The Pfaffian quantum Hall states, which can be viewed as involving pairing either of spin-polarized electrons or of composite fermions, are generalized by finding the exact ground states of certain Hamiltonians with $k+1$-body interactions, for all integers $k>~1.$ The remarkably simple wave functions of these states involve clusters of k particles, and are related to correlators of parafermion currents in two-dimensional conformal field theory. The $k=2$ case is the Pfaffian. For $k>~2,$ the quasiparticle excitations of these systems are expected to possess non-Abelian statistics, like those of the Pfaffian. For $k=3,$ these ground states have large overlaps with the ground states of the (two-body) Coulomb-interaction Hamiltonian for electrons in the first excited Landau level at total filling factors $\ensuremath{\nu}=2+3/5,2+2/5.$

Source: Physical review. B, Condensed matter

DOI: 10.1103/physrevb.59.8084

Authors: N. Read, E. Rezayi

Institutions: University of California, Santa Barbara, Yale University, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, California State University Los Angeles

Language: English

Topic: Quantum and electron transport phenomena

Subfield: Condensed Matter Physics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, University of California, Santa Barbara, Division of Materials Research

Awards: Presidential Young Investigator Award, RUI: Highly Correlated Systems of Reduced Dimensionality: A Study of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect