Microscopic geometric theory for gapped excitations in fractional topological fluids

TL;DR

This paper introduces a geometric framework for understanding all gapped excitations in fractional quantum Hall phases, revealing dualities and constructing microscopic wave functions for higher-spin neutral modes with potential experimental implications.

Contribution

It presents a novel geometric description of gapped excitations, including dualities and microscopic wave functions for higher-spin modes in fractional quantum Hall systems.

Findings

Duality between graviton-like excitations and non-Abelian quasiholes.

Construction of microscopic wave functions for higher-spin neutral modes.

Proposal of experimental detection methods for these modes.

Abstract

We propose a geometric description of all gapped excitations in fractional quantum Hall phases that reveals several fundamental understandings with experimental consequences. These include a duality between the Hilbert space of multiple gapped ``graviton-like" spin 2 excitations at $\nu=1/3$ Laughlin phase, and that of non-Abelian quasiholes of an irrational Haffnian conformal field theory. This leads us to construct microscopic wave functions for multiple higher-spin gapped neutral modes in the Laughlin phase. Carrying spin $s \ge 2$, they emerge from higher-order geometric deformations of the topological ground state, and live within the Gaffnian conformal Hilbert space asymptotically. We show that the full many-body Hilbert space of an FQH phase can be generated from superpositions of such geometric deformations, supporting a concrete geometric interpretation of all gapped excitations. We analyse the scattering between these higher spin modes and conjecture that they can have a long lifetime, and propose methods for their experimental detection.