On the Thermodynamics of Laughlin Liquid Freezing

Abstract

The competition between liquid and solid states of strongly correlated electron systems occurs in a novel way in a strong magnetic field. The fact that certain Landau level filling factors are especially favorable for the formation of strongly correlated liquid states, gives rise to the fractional quantum Hall effect. In this article we discuss some consequences of the existence of incompressible states with fractionally charged quasiparticle excitations for the thermodynamics of the liquid-solid transition.