Evidence for chiral graviton modes in fractional quantum Hall liquids
Exotic physics could emerge from interplay between geometry and correlation. In fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states1, novel collective excitations called chiral graviton modes (CGMs) are proposed as quanta of fluctuations of an internal quantum metric under a quantum geometry description2,3,4,5. Such modes are condensed-matter analogues of gravitons that are hypothetical spin-2 bosons. They are characterized by polarized states with chirality6,7,8 of +2 or −2, and energy gaps coinciding with the fundamental neutral collective excitations (namely, magnetorotons9,10) in the long-wavelength limit. However, CGMs remain experimentally inaccessible. Here we observe chiral spin-2 long-wavelength magnetorotons using inelastic scattering of circularly polarized lights, providing strong evidence for CGMs in FQH liquids. At filling factor v = 1/3, a gapped mode identified as the long-wavelength magnetoroton emerges under a specific polarization scheme corresponding to angular momentum S = −2, which persists at extremely long wavelength. Remarkably, the mode chirality remains −2 at v = 2/5 but becomes the opposite at v = 2/3 and 3/5. The modes have characteristic energies and sharp peaks with marked temperature and filling-factor dependence, corroborating the assignment of long-wavelength magnetorotons. The observations capture the essentials of CGMs and support the FQH geometrical description, paving the way to unveil rich physics of quantum metric effects in topological correlated systems.
All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are included in this paper. Additional data that support the plots and other analysis in this work are available from the corresponding author upon request.
