Observation of soft magnetorotons in bilayer quantum Hall ferromagnets

Inelastic light-scattering measurements of low-lying collective excitations of electron double layers in the quantum Hall state at total filling nu(T)=1 reveal a deep magnetoroton in the dispersion of charge-density excitations across the tunneling gap. The roton softens and sharpens markedly when the phase boundary for transitions to highly correlated compressible states is approached. The findings are interpreted with Hartree-Fock evaluations that link soft magnetorotons to enhanced excitonic Coulomb interactions and to quantum phase transitions in the ferromagnetic bilayers.     

Disorder and the fractional quantum Hall effect

The fractional quantum Hall effect is studied in the 2D electron gas of four GaAs-Al_xGa_1?xAs heterostructures. Localization due to disorder, known to give rise to the wide integral quantum Hall plateaus, is demonstrated to inhibit the fractional effect, which is observed only in the higher mobility samples.     

Fractional statistics in the fractional quantum Hall effect

A microscopic confirmation of the fractional statistics of the quasiparticles in the fractional quantum Hall effect has so far been lacking. We calculate the statistics of the composite-fermion quasiparticles at nu=1/3 and nu=2/5 by evaluating the Berry phase for a closed loop encircling another composite-fermion quasiparticle. A careful consideration of subtle perturbations in the trajectory due to the presence of an additional quasiparticle is crucial for obtaining the correct value of the statistics. The conditions for the applicability of the fractional statistics concept are discussed.     

Topology and fractional quantum Hall effect

Starting from Laughlin-type wave functions with generalized periodic boundary conditions describing the degenerate ground state of a quantum Hall system we explicitly construct r-dimensional vector bundles. It turns out that the filling factor ν is given by the topological quantity c₁/r where c₁ is the first Chem number of these vector bundles. In addition, we managed to proof that under physical natural assumptions the stable vector bundles correspond to the experimentally dominating series of measured fractional filling factors ν = n/(2pn±1). Most remarkably, due to the very special form of the Laughlin wave functions the fluctuations of the curvature of these vector bundles converge to zero in the limit of infinitely many particles which shows a new mathematical property. Physically, this means that in this limit the Hall conductivity is independent of the boundary conditions which is very important for the observability of the effect. Finally, we discuss the relation of this result to a theorem of Donaldson.     

Geometrical description of the fractional quantum Hall effect

The fundamental collective degree of freedom of fractional quantum Hall states is identified as a unimodular two-dimensional spatial metric that characterizes the local shape of the correlations of the incompressible fluid. Its quantum fluctuations are controlled by a topologically quantized "guiding-center spin." Charge fluctuations are proportional to its Gaussian curvature.