Fractional quantum Hall effect in a U(1)xSU(2) gauge field

Abstract

We consider the bosonic fractional quantum Hall effect in the presence of a non-Abelian gauge field in addition to the usual Abelian magnetic field. The non-Abelian field breaks the twofold internal state degeneracy, but preserves the Landau level degeneracy. Using exact diagonalization, we find that for moderate non-Abelian field strengths the system's behaviour resembles a single internal state quantum Hall system, while for stronger fields there is a phase transition to either two internal state behaviour or the complete absence of fractional quantum Hall plateaus. Usually the energy gap is reduced by the presence of a non-Abelian field, but some non-Abelian fields appear to slightly increase the gap of the $\nu=1$ and $\nu=3/2$ Read-Rezayi states.