Even denominator fractional quantum Hall states in higher Landau levels of graphene

Youngwook Kim, Ajit Coimbatore Balram, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Jainendra Jain, Jurgen Smet

28 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

An important development in the field of the fractional quantum Hall effect was the proposal that the 5/2 state observed in the Landau level with orbital index n = 1 of two-dimensional electrons in a GaAs quantum well1 originates from a chiral p-wave paired state of composite fermions that are topological bound states of electrons and quantized vortices. The excitations of this state, which is theoretically described by a 'Pfaffian' wavefunction2 or its hole partner called the anti-Pfaffian3,4, are neither fermions nor bosons but Majorana quasiparticles obeying non-Abelian braid statistics5. This has inspired ideas for fault-tolerant topological quantum computation6 and has also instigated a search for other states with exotic quasiparticles. Here we report experiments on monolayer graphene that show clear evidence for unexpected even denominator fractional quantum Hall physics in the n = 3 Landau level. We numerically investigate the known candidate states for the even denominator fractional quantum Hall effect, including the Pfaffian, the particle-hole symmetric Pfaffian and the 221-parton states, and conclude that, among these, the 221-parton appears a potentially suitable candidate to describe the experimentally observed state. Like the Pfaffian, this state is believed to harbour quasi-particles with non-Abelian braid statistics7.
Original languageEnglish
Article number2
JournalNature Physics
Volume15
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)154-158
Number of pages5
ISSN1745-2473
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2019

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