"The Fractional Quantum Hall Effect"
The fractional quantum Hall effect is important because it shows experimentally that particles carrying an exact fraction of the electron charge and interacting by means of gauge forces not postulated in the underlying equations of motion can arise spontaneously as a collective effect of ordinary electrons obeying the ordinary laws of quantum mechanics. I will review the history of the discovery and eventual explanation of the effect, and then discuss the larger implications for physics.
Robert Laughlin shared the 1998 Nobel Prize for Physics
with Horst Stormer and Daniel Tsui for the discovery and explanation of
the fractional quantum Hall effect.