Fractional Quantum Hall Effect In high mobility semiconductor
heterojunctions the integer quantum Hall effect (IQHE) plateaux
are much narrower than for lower mobility samples. Between these
narrow IQHE more plateaux are seen at fractional filling
factors, especially 1/3 and 2/3. This is the fractional quantum
Hall effect (FQHE) whose discovery in 1982 was completely
unexpected. In 1998 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to
Dan Tsui and Horst Stormer, the experimentalists who first
observed the FQHE, jointly with Robert Laughlin who suceeded in
explaing the result in terms of new quantum states of matter.
figure shows the fractional quantum Hall effect in a GaAs-GaAlAs
heterojunction, recorded at 30mK. Also included is the diagonal
component of resistivity, which shows regions of zero resistance
corresponding to each FQHE plateau. The principle series of
fractions that have been seen are listed below. They generally
get weaker going from left to right and down the page: (The
fractional quantum Hall effect