Impact of disorder on the 5/2 fractional quantum Hall state

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different types of disorder affect the energy gap of the =5/2 fractional quantum Hall state, revealing that long-range disorder is more harmful than short-range disorder.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of disorder effects on the 5/2 state in different high-quality GaAs samples, highlighting the distinct impacts of long-range and short-range disorder.

Findings

Long-range potential fluctuations are more detrimental to the 5/2 state.

Short-range disorder has a lesser impact on the energy gap.

Comparison between modulation doped quantum wells and heterojunction transistors.

Abstract

We compare the energy gap of the \nu=5/2 fractional quantum Hall effect state obtained in conventional high mobility modulation doped quantum well samples with those obtained in high quality GaAs transistors (heterojunction insulated gate field-effect transistors). We are able to identify the different roles that long range and short range disorders play in the 5/2 state and observe that the long range potential fluctuations are more detrimental to the strength of the 5/2 state than short-range potential disorder.