Abstract
This paper reports on our study of the edge of the fractional quantum Hall state, which is more complicated than the edge of the state because of the presence of edge sectors corresponding to different partitions of composite fermions in the lowest two levels. The addition of an electron at the edge is a nonperturbative process and it is not a priori obvious in what manner the added electron distributes itself over these sectors. We show, from a microscopic calculation, that when an electron is added at the edge of the ground state in the sector, where and are the numbers of composite fermions in the lowest two levels, the resulting state lies in either or sectors; adding an electron at the edge is thus equivalent to adding a composite fermion at the edge. The coupling to other sectors of the form , integer, is negligible in the asymptotically low-energy limit. This study also allows a detailed comparison with the two-boson model of the edge. We compute the spectral weights and find that while the individual spectral weights are complicated and nonuniversal, their sum is consistent with an effective two-boson description of the edge.
- Received 16 September 2011
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.84.245104
©2011 American Physical Society