Freiburg 2024 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 35: Poster VIII

A 35.8: Poster

Thursday, March 14, 2024, 17:00–19:00, Tent C

Realisation of a two-particle Laughlin state with rapidly rotating fermions — •Philipp Lunt, Paul Hill, Johannes Reiter, Maciej Galka, Philipp Preiss, and Selim Jochim — Physikalisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg

The fractional quantum Hall (FQH) effect features remarkable states that due to their strongly correlated nature and exotic topological properties have stimulated a rich body of research going far beyond the condensed matter community, where the effect was originally discovered. One fundamental class of FQH states is described by the celebrated Laughlin wavefunction, which accounts for a large number of plateaus in the Hall resistivity and already exhibits interesting anionic, fractionally charged quasi-particle excitations.

Here we present the direct realisation of the two-particle Laughlin wavefunction by rapid rotation of two interacting spinful fermions in a tight optical tweezer. We owe this result to our newly established experimental tools allowing us to precisely shape and modulate our optical potentials using coherently interfering laser fields.

Our observations reveal distinctive features of the Laughlin wavefunction, including a ground state distribution in the center-of-mass motion, a vortex distribution in the relative motion, correlations in the relative angle of the two particles, and the suppression of inter-particle interactions. This achievement represents a significant step towards scalable experiments, enabling the atom-by-atom assembly of fermionic fractional quantum Hall states in quantum simulators.

Keywords: Fractional quantum hall effect; Quantum simulation