Thermal ionization of impurity-bound quasiholes in the fractional quantum Hall effect

Abstract

We study the interplay between a Coulomb impurity and quasiholes in a fractional quantum Hall (FQH) state at finite temperatures. While a repulsive impurity can pin a quasihole and stabilize the FQH state, an attractive impurity cannot bind quasiholes. We demonstrate that at finite temperatures, a quasihole can be thermally ionized from a repulsive impurity, resulting in an ionization phase transition. We propose an experimental setup using exciton sensing to detect such a thermal ionization of quasiholes.