Crossover from Integer to Fractional Quantum Hall Effect

Abstract: The parton theory constructs candidate fractional quantum Hall states by decomposing the physical particles into unphysical partons, placing the partons in integer quantum Hall states, and then gluing the partons back into the physical particles. Field theoretical formulations execute the gluing process through the device of emergent gauge fields. Here we study numerically the process of going from the integer quantum Hall effect of two species of fermionic partons to the fractional quantum Hall effect of bosons by introducing an attractive interaction between the fermions of different species and continuously increasing its strength to glue them into bosons. To properly capture the physics in the bulk, we implement this process in a lattice version of the spherical geometry, which allows us to keep the full Hilbert space. Even though the two end-point states are topologically distinct, we find that, for the small system sizes accessible to our study, the energy gap remains open, indicating a crossover between these two states.