Physics Colloquium: Fractional quantum Hall effect and its "graviton" Presented by Dam Than Son - University of Chicago

The fractional quantum Hall effect is a remarkable physical phenomenon where electrons organize themselves into a strongly interacting fluid with nontrivial topological properties. It has recently been understood that the fractional quantum Hall fluids accomodate a spin-2 excitation, which, in certain theoretical models, is a condensed-matter analog of the graviton. In this talk we will review the basic physics of the fractional quantum Hall effect and discuss a recent experiment claiming observation of "chiral graviton modes" and its broader implications. Dam Thanh Son received his PhD from the Institute for Nuclear Research in Moscow, Russia. He was a postdoc at University of Washington and MIT and faculty member at Columbia University and University of Washington. From 2012 he is a faculty member at University of Chicago.