Since
its
discovery three decades ago, the phenomenon of the fractional quantum
Hall
effect (FQHE) has inspired a variety of particles characterized by their
unusual braidings. It
was appreciated quite early on that the FQHE may provide a realization
of
particles that obey fractional braid statistics, namely anyons, which
interpolate between bosons and fermions. Subsequently, it was proposed
that electrons
capture vortices to form composite fermions that experience an effective
magnetic field. An even more bizarre class of particles,
termed Majorana particles, was later envisioned in the context of the
5/2 FQHE; these constitute an example of nonabelian anyons. This
talk will review the essential properties and the scope of these
particles, and
present the current status of experimental evidence for them. It will
also discuss a recent theoretical proposal in which a complex pairing of
excited composite fermions can possibly result in FQHE at 3/8, which
may also support nonabelian quasiparticles.
*Note special 3:10pm start time.