Milestone-Proposal:Fractional Quantum Hall Effect

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Docket #:2024-13

This proposal has been submitted for review.

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To the proposer’s knowledge, is this achievement subject to litigation? No

Is the achievement you are proposing more than 25 years old? Yes

Is the achievement you are proposing within IEEE’s designated fields as defined by IEEE Bylaw I-104.11, namely: Engineering, Computer Sciences and Information Technology, Physical Sciences, Biological and Medical Sciences, Mathematics, Technical Communications, Education, Management, and Law and Policy. Yes

Did the achievement provide a meaningful benefit for humanity? Yes

Was it of at least regional importance? Yes

Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to pay for the milestone plaque(s)? Yes

Has the IEEE Section(s) in which the plaque(s) will be located agreed to arrange the dedication ceremony? Yes

Has the IEEE Section in which the milestone is located agreed to take responsibility for the plaque after it is dedicated? Yes

Has the owner of the site agreed to have it designated as an IEEE Milestone? Yes

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Year or range of years in which the achievement occurred:

1982

Title of the proposed milestone:

Fractional Quantum Hall Effect

Plaque citation summarizing the achievement and its significance; if personal name(s) are included, such name(s) must follow the achievement itself in the citation wording: Text absolutely limited by plaque dimensions to 70 words; 60 is preferable for aesthetic reasons.

The Fractional Quantum Hall Effect (FQHE) was discovered in 1982 by Daniel Tsui, Horst Stormer, and Art Gossard. Their work demonstrated that a new state of matter with macroscopic quantum properties - an incompressible quantum liquid that hosts fractional charges- could be created in a properly engineered two-dimensional electron system. This upended previously held scientific understanding of quantum states of matter and introduced a novel concept of topological order, a key physical ingredient enabling fault-tolerant quantum devices.

200-250 word abstract describing the significance of the technical achievement being proposed, the person(s) involved, historical context, humanitarian and social impact, as well as any possible controversies the advocate might need to review.

While conducting traditional Hall measurements on specially designed ultra-pure gallium arsenide semiconductor quantum wells grown by Art Gossard, Daniel Tsui and Horst Stormer in 1982 discovered quantized Hall resistance with the value suggesting quasiparticles carrying 1/3 of an electron charge. This effect was later observed at this and other odd-denominator fractions: 1/3, 2/5, 3/7, etc., none of which were theoretically anticipated at the time. Their measurements led to a breakthrough in the understanding of 2D electron systems and showed that at very low temperatures and high magnetic fields, electrons can condense into a quantum liquid with fractionally charged excitations whose properties are entirely determined by electron-electron interactions. This discovery won them and theorist Robert Laughlin the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The discovery of the FQHE spurred important and ongoing progress not only in experiment but in the theory of condensed matter systems at large. Laughlin’s theory elegantly described the fundamental wavefunction of the interacting electrons, indicating fractional charges. Importantly, the discovery presented a completely new type of quantum phase in condensed matter. Prior to this discovery, states of matter and their properties could be understood through Landau’s theory of symmetry breaking, but understanding the FQHE required the novel concept of topological order. Topological order describes macroscopic quantum states and can support charge carriers that are a fraction of the electron charge, something never seen before the FQHE. Importantly, topological order can require non-local entanglement, a potentially important component to achieving long coherence times crucial for quantum computing. The discovery of FQHE and its theoretical explanation have led to a new era of physics and engineered quantum systems relying on topological order, enabling new solid-state devices for applications in fault-tolerant quantum memory and quantum computation.

IEEE technical societies and technical councils within whose fields of interest the Milestone proposal resides.

Solid-State Circuits

In what IEEE section(s) does it reside?

North Jersey

IEEE Organizational Unit(s) which have agreed to sponsor the Milestone:

IEEE Organizational Unit(s) paying for milestone plaque(s):

Unit: North Jersey Section
Senior Officer Name: Hong Zhao

IEEE Organizational Unit(s) arranging the dedication ceremony:

Unit: North Jersey Section
Senior Officer Name: Hong Zhao

IEEE section(s) monitoring the plaque(s):

IEEE Section: North Jersey
IEEE Section Chair name: Hong Zhao

Milestone proposer(s):

Proposer name: Theodore Sizer
Proposer email: Proposer's email masked to public

Please note: your email address and contact information will be masked on the website for privacy reasons. Only IEEE History Center Staff will be able to view the email address.

Street address(es) and GPS coordinates in decimal form of the intended milestone plaque site(s):

600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ 07974 40.684031, -74.401783

Describe briefly the intended site(s) of the milestone plaque(s). The intended site(s) must have a direct connection with the achievement (e.g. where developed, invented, tested, demonstrated, installed, or operated, etc.). A museum where a device or example of the technology is displayed, or the university where the inventor studied, are not, in themselves, sufficient connection for a milestone plaque.

Please give the address(es) of the plaque site(s) (GPS coordinates if you have them). Also please give the details of the mounting, i.e. on the outside of the building, in the ground floor entrance hall, on a plinth on the grounds, etc. If visitors to the plaque site will need to go through security, or make an appointment, please give the contact information visitors will need. Intention is to have the plaque just outside the main entrance to the Nokia Bell Labs facility in Murray Hill, NJ. Is both a corporate building and an Historic Site as other historical markers from IEEE are already on site both inside and outside the building.

Are the original buildings extant?

Yes

Details of the plaque mounting:

Outside the building on a rock or other permanent structure.

How is the site protected/secured, and in what ways is it accessible to the public?

The plaque will be prior to entering the building and thus there is no need to pass through security.

Who is the present owner of the site(s)?

Nokia America

What is the historical significance of the work (its technological, scientific, or social importance)? If personal names are included in citation, include detailed support at the end of this section preceded by "Justification for Inclusion of Name(s)". (see section 6 of Milestone Guidelines)

A fundamental discovery of the structure of matter by finding that electrons in strong magnetic fields form a quantum fluid of quasi-particles that have fractional electronic charges.

What obstacles (technical, political, geographic) needed to be overcome?

Extending the work of Klitzing, performing measurements at extremely low temperatures and high magnetic fields to form the fluid under test.

What features set this work apart from similar achievements?

A fundamental finding influencing physics ever since and recognized with the Nobel Prize in 1998.

Why was the achievement successful and impactful?

The achievement defined a new state of matter which had unique quantum properties which countered previously held scientific understanding of quantum states of matter.

Supporting texts and citations to establish the dates, location, and importance of the achievement: Minimum of five (5), but as many as needed to support the milestone, such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or chapters in scholarly books. 'Scholarly' is defined as peer-reviewed, with references, and published. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. At least one of the references must be from a scholarly book or journal article. All supporting materials must be in English, or accompanied by an English translation.

"Fractional Quantum Hall Effect at low temperatures", PhysRevB.28.6133 "Two-Dimensional Magnetotransport in the Extreme Quantum Limit" Phys Rev Lett. V48, #22 31 May 1982 pp 1559- 1562 "Nobel Lecture: The fractional quantum Hall effect" Rev Modern Physics, v71, #4 4 July 1999 pp875-889 Stormer, HL; Tsui, DC (1983), "The Quantized Hall Effect.", Science, vol. 220, no. 4603 (published Jun 17, 1983), pp. 1241–1246 Willett R., Wisenstein J.P, Stormer H.L., Tsui D.C., Gossard A.C., and English J.H. "Observation of an Even-Denominator QuantumNumber in the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect" PhysRevLett v59, #15, pp1776-1779

Supporting materials (supported formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, DOC): All supporting materials must be in English, or if not in English, accompanied by an English translation. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. For documents that are copyright-encumbered, or which you do not have rights to post, email the documents themselves to ieee-history@ieee.org. Please see the Milestone Program Guidelines for more information.

Please email a jpeg or PDF a letter in English, or with English translation, from the site owner(s) giving permission to place IEEE milestone plaque on the property, and a letter (or forwarded email) from the appropriate Section Chair supporting the Milestone application to ieee-history@ieee.org with the subject line "Attention: Milestone Administrator." Note that there are multiple texts of the letter depending on whether an IEEE organizational unit other than the section will be paying for the plaque(s).

Please recommend reviewers by emailing their names and email addresses to ieee-history@ieee.org. Please include the docket number and brief title of your proposal in the subject line of all emails.