Anyons in Integer Quantum Hall Magnets

• Main Authors: Armin Rahmani, Rodrigo A. Muniz, Ivar Martin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society 2013-08-01
• Series: Physical Review X
• Online Access: http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.3.031008

Strongly correlated fractional quantum Hall liquids support fractional excitations, which can be understood in terms of adiabatic flux insertion arguments. A second route to fractionalization is through the coupling of weakly interacting electrons to topologically nontrivial backgrounds such as in polyacetylene. Here, we demonstrate that electronic fractionalization combining features of both these mechanisms occurs in noncoplanar itinerant magnetic systems, where integer quantum Hall physics arises from the coupling of electrons to the magnetic background. The topologically stable magnetic vortices in such systems carry fractional (in general, irrational) electronic quantum numbers and exhibit Abelian anyonic statistics. We analyze the properties of these topological defects by mapping the distortions of the magnetic texture onto effective non-Abelian vector potentials. We support our analytical results with extensive numerical calculations.