The Gaffnian and Haffnian: physical relevance of non-unitary CFT for incompressible fractional quantum Hall effect

Abstract: We motivate a close look on the usefulness of the Gaffnian and Haffnian quasihole manifold (null spaces of the respective model Hamiltonians) for well-known gapped fractional quantum Hall (FQH) phases. The conformal invariance of these subspaces are derived explicitly from microscopic many-body states. The resultant CFT description leads to an intriguing emergent primary field with $h=2,c=0$, and we argue the quasihole manifolds are quantum mechanically well-defined and well-behaved. Focusing on the incompressible phases at $\nu=1/3$ and $\nu=2/5$, we show the low-lying excitations of the Laughlin phase are quantum fluids of Gaffnian and Haffnian quasiholes, and give a microscopic argument showing that the Haffnian model Hamiltonian is gapless against Laughlin quasielectrons. We discuss the thermal Hall conductance and shot noise measurements at $\nu=2/5$, and argue that the experimental observations can be understood from the dynamics within the Gaffnian quasihole manifold. A number of detailed predictions on these experimental measurements are proposed, and we discuss their relationships to the conventional CFT arguments and the composite fermion descriptions.