Fusing Quantum Hall States in Cold Atoms

Abstract

Realizing quantum Hall states in a fast rotating Bose gas is a long sought goal in cold atom research. The effort is very challenging because Bose statistics fights against quantum Hall correlations. In contrast, Fermi statistics does not cause such conflict. Here, we show that by sweeping the integer quantum Hall states of a spin-1/2 Fermi gas across the Feshbach resonance from the BCS side to the BEC side at a "projection" rate similar to that in the "projection" experiment of fermion superfluid, these states can be "fused" into a bosonic quantum Hall states. A projection sweep means the pair association is sufficiently fast so that the center of mass of the pair remains unchanged in the process. We show that the fusion of integer fermion states with filling factor $ν_{\uparrow}=ν_{\downarrow}=n$ will result in a bosonic Laughlin state and Pfaffian state for $n=1$ and 2. The is due to a hidden property of the fermionic integer quantum Hall states -- for any grouping of opposite spin into pairs, their centers of mass automatically assume a bosonic quantum Hall structure.