FQHE and tt* Geometry

Abstract

Cumrun Vafa proposed a new unifying model for the principal series of FQHE which predicts non-Abelian statistics of the quasi-holes. The many-body Hamiltonian supporting these topological phases of matter is invariant under four supersymmetries. In the thesis we study the geometrical properties of this Landau-Ginzburg theory. The emerging picture is in agreement with the Vafa's predictions. The $4$-SQM Vafa Hamiltonian is shown to capture the topological order of FQHE and the $tt^{*}$ monodromy representation of the braid group factors through a Temperley-Lieb/Hecke algebra with $q = \pm \exp(\pi i/\nu)$. In particular, the quasi-holes have the same non-Abelian braiding properties of the degenerate field $\phi_{1,2}$ in Virasoro minimal models. Part of the thesis is dedicated to minor results about the geometrical properties of the Vafa model for the case of a single electron. In particular, we study a special class of models which reveal a beautiful connection between the physics of quantum Hall effect and the geometry of modular curves. Despite it is not relevant for phenomenological purposes, this class of theories has remarkable properties which enlarge further the rich mathematical structure of FQHE.Comment: Doctoral thesis, SISSA, Trieste, Italy (2019