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Universal anyon tunnelling in a chiral Luttinger liquid

Nature Physics (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The edge modes of fractional quantum Hall liquids are described by chiral Luttinger liquid theory. Despite many years of experimental investigation, fractional quantum Hall edge modes are not fully understood, and clear discrepancies between experimental observations and detailed predictions of chiral Luttinger liquid theory remain. Here we report the measurements of tunnelling conductance between counterpropagating edge modes at a filling factor of 1/3 across a quantum point contact. We present evidence for the tunnelling of anyons through an incompressible liquid that exhibits universal scaling behaviour with respect to temperature, source–drain bias and barrier transmission, as originally proposed by prior theoretical work. For large transmission through the quantum point contact, we measured the tunnelling exponent \(\bar{g}=0.333\pm 0.005\) averaged over 29 independent datasets, consistent with the scaling dimension of 1/6 for a Laughlin quasiparticle at the edge. When combined with the measurements of the fractional charge and the recently observed anyonic statistical angle, the measured tunnelling exponent fully characterizes the topological order of the primary Laughlin state at the filling factor of 1/3.

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Fig. 1: Magnetotransport and QPC conductance at ν = 1 and ν = 1/3.
Fig. 2: Differential conductance at ν = 1/3 as a function of QPC transmission and temperature.
Fig. 3: Zero-bias tunnelling conductance versus T/T0.
Fig. 4: Scaling of reduced tunnelling conductance versus e*VSD/kBT.

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Data availability

Source data are provided with this paper. All other data that support the plots within this paper are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

These experiments are sponsored by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under award number DE-SC0020138. The theoretical work is sponsored by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under award number DE-FG02-06ER46316. The content of the information presented here does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the US government, and no official endorsement should be inferred.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Ramon Guerrero-Suarez, Adithya Suresh, Tanmay Maiti, Shuang Liang, James Nakamura & Michael Manfra

  2. Microsoft Quantum Lab West Lafayette, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Geoffrey Gardner & Michael Manfra

  3. Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Claudio Chamon

  4. Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Michael Manfra

  5. School of Materials Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Michael Manfra

Authors
  1. Ramon Guerrero-Suarez
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  6. Geoffrey Gardner
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Contributions

R.G.-S., A.S. and M.M. designed the experiments. J.N. and M.M. designed the heterostructure. S.L. and G.G. conducted the molecular-beam epitaxy growth. J.N. fabricated the devices. R.G.-S. and A.S. performed the measurements and analysed the data with input from T.M. and M.M. C.C. provided theoretical support. R.G.-S., A.S., C.C. and M.M. wrote the paper with input from all authors.

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Correspondence to Michael Manfra.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–6, equations (1)–(3) and Discussion.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Measurement source data.

Source Data Fig. 2

Measurement source data.

Source Data Fig. 3

Theoretical curve data and measurement source data.

Source Data Fig. 4

Extracted data from the least squares fit.

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Guerrero-Suarez, R., Suresh, A., Maiti, T. et al. Universal anyon tunnelling in a chiral Luttinger liquid. Nat. Phys. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-025-03039-9

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