Spatiotemporal imaging of gate-controlled multipath dynamics of fractional quantum Hall edge excitations

Abstract

Quantum Hall edge excitations, whose low-energy behavior admits a chiral conformal-field-theory description, are a promising platform for engineered dynamical experiments, including analog-spacetime proposals. However, establishing their edge dynamics in realistic electrostatic landscapes is essential for controlled dynamical experiments and has remained experimentally challenging. Here we report spatiotemporal imaging of gate-controlled multipath dynamics of edge excitations in a $ν= 1/3$ fractional quantum Hall device using stroboscopic time-resolved photoluminescence microscopy and spectroscopy with $\sim$100-ps resolution. By tuning a control-gate-defined potential landscape, we observe switching between mesa-defined and gate-defined trajectories and identify an intermediate regime in which a single launched excitation accesses multiple pathways. Time-resolved measurements at downstream locations reveal gate-dependent arrival times and pronounced temporal broadening, showing that the propagation dynamics are strongly modified by the local confinement and become increasingly dispersive in a multipath landscape. We further observe a long-range transverse optical response extending tens of micrometers into the bulk and persisting over distances exceeding 200 $μ$m downstream, consistent with the near-field component of an edge magnetoplasmon. These results establish direct experimental access to controllable multipath edge dynamics in the fractional quantum Hall regime and suggest a platform for engineered nonequilibrium and interference-based experiments, as well as future analog-spacetime studies in quantum Hall edge systems.