QDev Seminar: Jainendra Jain

 "Composite Fermions: The Magical Beauty of Emergence"

The fractional quantum Hall effect is one of the most amazing collective states observed in nature, wherein interacting electrons behave in completely unexpected ways. It has inspired many new concepts, such as fractional charge and fractional braid statistics. I will begin by showing how the emergence of new particles called composite fermions explains this effect by unifying it with the well understood integer quantum Hall effect, while at the same time revealing a treasure trove of new phenomena. I will also report on some recent works that rely on the quantitative accuracy of the composite fermion theory to resolve certain longstanding mysteries [1,2]. The talk will be of a pedagogical nature and should, for most part, be understandable to a first year graduate student.

[1] "Competing Crystal Phases in the Lowest Landau Level," A. C. Archer, K. Park, J. K. Jain, PRL 111, 146804 (2013).
[2] "The Enigmatic 4/11 State: A Prototype for Unconventional Fractional Quantum Hall Effect," S. Mukherjee, S. S. Mandal, Y.H. Wu, A. Wojs, J. K. Jain, preprint.