Invariance of Charge of Laughlin Quasiparticles

Abstract

A Quantum Antidot electrometer has been used in the first direct observation of the fractionally quantized electric charge. In this paper we report experiments performed on the integer i = 1, 2 and fractional f = 1/3 quantum Hall plateaus extending over a filling factor range of at least 27%. We find the charge of the Laughlin quasiparticles to be invariantly e/3, with standard deviation of 1.2% and absolute accuracy of 4%, independent of filling, tunneling current, and temperature.

4 pages, 5 figs