Very-High-Energy Collective States of Partons in Fractional Quantum Hall Liquids

The low-energy physics of fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states—a paradigm of strongly correlated topological phases of matter—to a large extent is captured by weakly interacting quasiparticles known as composite fermions. In this paper, based on numerical simulations and effective field theory, we argue that some high-energy states in the FQH spectra necessitate a different description based on parton quasiparticles. We show that Jain states at filling factor ν=n/(2pn±1) with integers n, p≥2 support two kinds of collective modes: In addition to the well-known Girvin-MacDonald-Platzman (GMP) mode, they host a high-energy collective mode, which we interpret as the GMP mode of partons. We elucidate observable signatures of the parton mode in the dynamics following a geometric quench. We construct a microscopic wave function for the parton mode and demonstrate agreement between its variational energy and exact diagonalization. Using the parton construction, we derive a field theory of the Jain states and show that the previously proposed effective theories follow from our approach. Our results point to partons being “real” quasiparticles which, in a way reminiscent of quarks, become observable only at sufficiently high energies.