Physics Nobel Prize Goes to Tsui, Stormer and Laughlin for the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect

DEC 01, 1998

In the 16 years since the totally unanlicipated discovery of the first of the fractional quantum Hall states, these intriguing quantum liquids have spawned a thriving cottage industry for theorists and experimenters.

DOI: 10.1063/1.882480

Bertram M. Schwarzschild

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics is shared by Robert Laughlin (Stanford), Horst Stormer (Columbia University and Bell Laboratories) and Daniel Tsui (Princeton), for their roles in the discovery and explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect. In 1982, when Stormer and Tsui were experimenters at Bell Labs, they and their colleague Arthur Gossard discovered this totally unexpected quantum effect in the transport properties of two‐dimensional electron gases at low temperature in strong magnetic fields.’ (See PHYSICS TODAY, July 1983, page 19.)

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