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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 100 » Issue 11
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 110405 (2008) [4 pages]

Irrational Versus Rational Charge and Statistics in Two-Dimensional Quantum Systems

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Claudio Chamon1,2, Chang-Yu Hou1, Roman Jackiw3, Christopher Mudry4, So-Young Pi1, and Andreas P. Schnyder5
1Physics Department, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA
2Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
3Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
4Condensed matter theory group, Paul Scherrer Institut, CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland
5Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA

Received 3 July 2007; revised 14 November 2007; published 21 March 2008

We show that quasiparticle excitations with irrational charge and irrational exchange statistics exist in tight-binding systems described, in the continuum approximation, by the Dirac equation in (2+1)-dimensional space and time. These excitations can be deconfined at zero temperature, but when they are, the charge rerationalizes to the value 1/2 and the exchange statistics to that of “quartons” (half-semions).

© 2008 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.110405
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.110405
PACS:
05.30.Pr
 
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