{"id":244610,"date":"2026-09-29T01:31:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T06:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/rare-quantum-state-reveals-particles-with-quarter-electron-charge"},"modified":"2026-09-29T01:31:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T06:31:49","slug":"rare-quantum-state-reveals-particles-with-quarter-electron-charge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/rare-quantum-state-reveals-particles-with-quarter-electron-charge","title":{"rendered":"Rare quantum state reveals particles with quarter-electron charge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/rare-quantum-state-reveals-particles-with-quarter-electron-charge.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>An electron\u2019s charge is normally fixed, like a coin you can\u2019t break into pieces. But if electrons are cooled close to absolute zero and trapped in a two-dimensional layer under a powerful magnetic field, they organize into a collective state of \u201cquasiparticles\u201d that seem to hold only a fraction of an electron\u2019s charge.<\/p>\n<p>This state is known as the \u201cfractional quantum Hall effect.\u201d A small number of these states, known as \u201ceven-denominator states,\u201d have drawn attention because some theories predict they could contain unusual quasiparticles called \u201cnon-Abelian anyons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why are these interesting? Because their quantum properties make them candidates for storing and processing information in fault-tolerant (error-resistant) topological quantum computers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An electron\u2019s charge is normally fixed, like a coin you can\u2019t break into pieces. But if electrons are cooled close to absolute zero and trapped in a two-dimensional layer under a powerful magnetic field, they organize into a collective state of \u201cquasiparticles\u201d that seem to hold only a fraction of an electron\u2019s charge. This state [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}