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Science 28 October 1988:
Vol. 242. no. 4878, pp. 525 - 533
DOI: 10.1126/science.242.4878.525
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Articles

The Relationship Between High-Temperature Superconductivity and the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect

R. B. LAUGHLIN 1

1 Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, and is also at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550.

The case is made that the spin-liquid state of a Mott insulator, hypothesized to exist by Anderson and identified by him as the correct context for discussing high-temperature superconductors, occurs in these materials and exhibits the principles of fractional quantization identified in the fractional quantum Hall effect. The most important of these is that particles carrying a fraction of an elementary quantum number, in this case spin, attract one another by a powerful gauge force, which can lead to a new kind of superconductivity. The temperature scale for the superconductivity is set by an energy gap in the spin-wave spectrum, which is also the fundamental measure of how "liquid" the spins are.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Photoemission Studies of High-Tc Superconductors: The Superconducting Gap.
Z. -X. Shen, W. E. Spicer, D. M. King, D. S. Dessau, and B. O. Wells (1995)
Science 267, 343-350
   Abstract »    PDF »
Anyons Superconduct, But Do Superconductors Have Anyons?.
S. M. Girvin (1992)
Science 257, 1354-1355
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Fermi Surfaces, Fermi Liquids, and High-Temperature Superconductors.
W. E. PICKETT, D. J. SINGH, H. KRAKAUER, and R. E. COHEN (1992)
Science 255, 46-54
   Abstract »    PDF »
Fractional Statistics: Quantum Possibilities in Two Dimensions.
G. S. Canright and S. M. Girvin (1990)
Science 247, 1197-1205
   Abstract »    PDF »
Photoemission Spectroscopy of the High-Temperature Superconductivity Gap.
G. Margaritondo, D. L. Huber, and C. G. Olson (1989)
Science 246, 770-775
   Abstract »    PDF »


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