Multiple Scattering of Fractionally-Charged Quasiparticles

Abstract

We employ shot noise measurements to characterize the effective charge of quasiparticles, at filling factor nu=1/3 of the fractional quantum Hall regime, as they scatter from an array of identical weak backscatterers. Upon scattering, quasiparticles are known to bunch, e.g., only three e/3 charges, or 'electrons' are found to traverse a rather opaque potential barrier. We find here that the effective charge scattered by an array of scatterers is determined by the scattering strength of an individual scatterer and not by the combined scattering strength of the array, which can be very small. Moreover, we also rule out intra-edge equilibration of e/3 quasiparticles over length scale of hundreds microns.