Project description
Probing fractional charge and statistics with electronic interferometers
Fractional quantum Hall states are predicted to host exotic quasiparticles carrying fractional charge and obeying fractional anyonic braiding statistics. Recent research aimed at shedding light on quasiparticle exchange statistics has uncovered that spontaneous, non-topological, neutral edge modes are the main culprit behind quasiparticle disorder. The EU-funded ANYONIC project will develop a new class of micro-sized electronic interferometers on ultra-high quality GaAs wafers to probe fractional charge and statistics. To quench the neutral edge modes, the interferometer will be based on synthetically engineered fractional modes. The local environment of such modes can be controlled, rendering it less hospitable for the neutral edge modes. Thermal conductance measurements should help identify the topological orders of exotic states, namely distinguishing between abelian and non-abelian fractional states.
Objective
Since their discovery, Quantum Hall Effects have unfolded intriguing avenues of research, exhibiting a multitude of unexpected exotic states: accurate quantized conductance states; particle-like and hole-conjugate fractional states; counter-propagating charge and neutral edge modes; and fractionally charged quasiparticles - abelian and (predicted) non-abelian. Since the sought-after anyonic statistics of fractional states is yet to be verified, I propose to launch a thorough search for it employing new means. I believe that our studies will serve the expanding field of the emerging family of topological materials.
Our on-going attempts to observe quasiparticles (qps) interference, in order to uncover their exchange statistics (under ERC), taught us that spontaneous, non-topological, neutral edge modes are the main culprit responsible for qps dephasing. In an effort to quench the neutral modes, we plan to develop a new class of micro-size interferometers, based on synthetically engineered fractional modes. Flowing away from the fixed physical edge, their local environment can be controlled, making it less hospitable for the neutral modes.
Having at hand our synthetized helical-type fractional modes, it is highly tempting to employ them to form localize para-fermions, which will extend the family of exotic states. This can be done by proximitizing them to a superconductor, or gapping them via inter-mode coupling.
The less familiar thermal conductance measurements, which we recently developed (under ERC), will be applied throughout our work to identify topological orders of exotic states; namely, distinguishing between abelian and non-abelian fractional states.
The proposal is based on an intensive and continuous MBE effort, aimed at developing extremely high purity, GaAs based, structures. Among them, structures that support our new synthetic modes that are amenable to manipulation, and others that host rare exotic states, such as v=5/2, 12/5, 19/8, and 35/16.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
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Funding Scheme
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantHost institution
7610001 Rehovot
Israel