LAUGHLIN'S WAVE FUNCTION AND ANGULAR MOMENTUM

Abstract

In 1983, Laughlin reported a wave function which while using the first-principles kinetic energy and Coulomb interactions fractionalizes the charge of the electron so that a charge such as 1/3 occurs. Since then this wave function has been applied to many problems in condensed matter physics. An effort is made to review the literature dealing with Aharonov–Bohm effect, ground state, confinement, phase transitions, Wigner and Luttinger solids, edge states, Anderson's theory, statistics and anyons, etc. The importance of the angular momentum is pointed out and it is shown that Landau levels play an important role in understanding the fractions at which the plateaus occur in the quantum Hall effect.