Condensed Matter Theory

Abstract:

We analyze the tunneling of non-Abelian quasiparticles between the edges of a quantum Hall droplet at the Landau level filling fraction nu=5/2, assuming that the electrons in the first excited Landau level organize themselves in the non-Abelian Moore-Read Pfaffian state. By bosonizing the edge theory, we show that an effective spin-1/2 degree of freedom emerges in the description of a point contact. We show how the crossover from the high-temperature regime of weak quasiparticle tunneling between the edges of the droplet, with the 4-terminal Rxx approximately T(-3/2), to the low-temperature limit, with Rxx(-1/10)(h/e2) approximately-T4, is closely related to the two-channel Kondo effect. We give a physical interpretation for the entropy loss of ln(2[square root of 2) in this crossover.