Fractional Angular Momentum of an Atom on a Noncommutative Plane*

Abstract

Abstract The mechanism of obtaining the fractional angular momentum by employing a trapped atom which possesses a permanent magnetic dipole moment in the background of two electric fields is reconsidered by using an alternative method. Then, we generalize this model to a noncommutative plane. We show that there are two different mechanisms, which include cooling down the atom to the negligibly small kinetic energy and modulating the density of electric charges to the critical value to get the fractional angular momentum theoretically.