title: Spontaneous particle-hole symmetry breaking in the nu=5/2 fractional quantum Hall effect.
abstract: The essence of the nu=5/2 fractional quantum Hall effect is believed to be captured by the Moore-Read Pfaffian (or anti-Pfaffian) description. However, a mystery regarding the formation of the Pfaffian state is the role of the three-body interaction Hamiltonian H3 that produces it as an exact ground state and the concomitant particle-hole symmetry breaking. We show that a two-body interaction Hamiltonian H2 constructed via particle-hole symmetrization of H3 produces a ground state nearly exactly approximating the Pfaffian and anti-Pfaffian states, respectively, in the spherical geometry. Importantly, the ground state energy of H2 exhibits a "Mexican-hat" structure as a function of particle number in the vicinity of half filling for a given flux indicating spontaneous particle-hole symmetry breaking. This signature is absent for the second Landau level Coulomb interaction at 5/2.
authors.affiliation: Condensed Matter Theory Center, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
authors.forename: Michael R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Peterson
authors.forename: Kwon
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Das Sarma