Fractional charge revealed in computer simulations of resonant tunneling in the fractional quantum Hall regime

The concept of fractional charge is central to the theory of the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE). Quasiparticles of fractional charge have been first observed by Goldman and Su [1] in resonant tunneling through a quantum antidot. In [1] a periodic sequence of resonant tunneling events was observed as either the magnetic field H or the backgate voltage Vg were varied. The tunneling events are thought of in terms of a quasiparticle tunneling through the bulk of the fractional state between the outer edge of the sample and the inner edge formed around the antidot. The periodicities in H and in Vg were related to the quasiparticle charge e*. Here I use exact diagonalization as well as configuration space renormalization (CSR) to study finite clusters large enough to contain two independent edges. I analyze the conditions of resonant tunneling between the two edges. The ``computer experiment'' reveals a periodic sequence of resonant tunneling events consistent with the experimentally observed fractional quantization of electric charge in units of e/3 and e/5 [2]. \newline [1] V.J. Goldman and B. Su, Science, 267, 1010, 1995. \newline [2] E.V. Tsiper, Phys. Rev. Lett., 97, 76802, 2006.