No Arabic abstract
Aharonov-Bohm interferometry is the most direct probe of anyonic statistics in the quantum Hall effect. The technique involves oscillations of the electric current as a function of the magnetic field and is not applicable to Kitaev spin liquids and other systems without charged quasiparticles. Here, we establish a novel protocol, involving heat transport, for revealing fractional statistics even in the absence of charged excitations, as is the case in quantum spin liquids. Specifically, we demonstrate that heat transport in Kitaev spin liquids through two distinct interferometer geometries, Fabry-Perot and Mach-Zehnder, exhibits drastically different behaviors. Therefore, we propose the use of heat transport interferometry as a probe of anyonic statistics in charge insulators.
In the context of one-dimensional fermionic systems, helical Luttiger liquids are not only characterized by intriguing spin properties, but also by the possibility to be manipulated by means of electrostatic gates, exploiting finite Rashba coupling. We use this property to show that a heterostructure composed of a helical Luttinger liquid, contacted to two metallic leads and supplemented by top gates, can be used as a tunable thermal valve. By relying on bosonization techniques and scattering of plasmonic modes, we investigate the performance of this valve with respect to electron-electron interactions, temperature, and properties of the gates. The maximal modulation of the thermal conductance that the proposed device can achieve is, for experimentally relevant parameters, around $7 %$. Such variation can be both positive or negative. Moreover, a modification in the geometry of the gate can lead to particular temperature dependencies related to interference effects. We also argue that the effects we predict can be used to establish the helical nature of the edge states in two-dimensional topological insulators.
An adiabatic approach put forward by Greiter and Wilczek interpolates between the integer quantum Hall effects of electrons and composite fermions by varying the statistical flux bound to electrons continuously from zero to an even integer number of flux quanta, such that the intermediate states represent anyons in an external magnetic field with the same effective integer filling factor. We consider such anyons on a torus, and construct representative wave functions for their ground as well as excited states. These wave functions involve higher Landau levels in general, but can be explicitly projected into the lowest Landau level for many parameters. We calculate the variational energy gap between the first excited state and ground state and find that it remains open as the statistical phase is varied. Finally, we obtain from these wave functions, both analytically and numerically, various topological quantities, such the ground state degeneracy, the Chern number and the Hall viscosity.
We study the trapping of Abelian anyons (quasiholes and quasiparticles) by a local potential (e.g., induced by an AFM tip) in a microscopic model of fractional quantum Hall liquids with long-range Coulomb interaction and edge confining potential. We find, in particular, at Laughlin filling fraction $ u = 1/3$, both quasihole and quasiparticle states can emerge as the ground state of the system in the presence of the trapping potential. As expected, we find the presence of an Abelian quasihole has no effect on the edge spectrum of the quantum liquid, unlike in the non-Abelian case [Phys. Rev. Lett. {bf 97}, 256804 (2006)]. Although quasiholes and quasiparticles can emerge generically in the system, their stability depends on the strength of the confining potential, the strength and the range of the trapping potential. We discuss the relevance of the calculation to the high-accuracy generation and control of individual anyons in potential experiments, in particular, in the context of topological quantum computing.
We describe and analyze in detail our recent theoretical proposal for the realization and manipulation of anyons in a weakly interacting system consisting of a two-dimensional electron gas in the integer quantum Hall regime adjacent to a type-II superconducting film with an artificial array of pinning sites. The anyon is realized in response to a defect in the pinned vortex lattice and carries a charge pm e/2 and a statistical angle pi/4. We establish this result, both analytically and numerically, in three complementary approaches: (i) a continuum model of two-dimensional electrons in the vortex lattice of the superconducting film; (ii) a minimal tight-binding lattice model that captures the essential features of the system; and (iii) an effective theory of the superconducting vortex lattice superposed on the integer quantum Hall state. We propose a novel method to measure the fractional charge directly in a bulk transport experiment and an all-electric setup for an ``anyon shuttle implementing the braiding operations. We briefly discuss conditions for fabricating the system in the lab and its potential applications in quantum information processing with non-Abelian anyons.
In this article, we present a systematic study of quantum statistics and dynamics of a pair of anyons in the lowerst Landau level (LLL), of direct relevance to quasiparticle excitations in the quantum Hall bulk. We develop the formalism for such a two-dimensional setting of two charged particles subject to a transverse field, including fractional angular momentum states and the related algebra stemming from the anyonic boundary condition, coherent state descriptions of localized anyons, and bunching features associated with such anyons. We analyze the dynamic motion of the anyons in a harmonic trap, emphasizing phase factors emerging from exchange statistics. We then describe non-equilibrium dynamics upon the application of a saddle potential, elaborating on its role as a squeezing operator acting on LLL coherent states, and its action as a beam splitter for anyons. Employing these potential landscapes as building blocks, we analyze anyon dynamics in a quantum Hall bulk interferometer. We discuss parallels between the presented LLL setting and other realms, extensively in the context of quantum optics, whose formalism we heavily borrow from, and briefly in that of black hole phenomena.