Experimental determination of fractional chargee/qfor quasiparticle excitations in the fractional quantum Hall effect

The Laughlin-Haldane prediction that the charge e^* of quasiparticles excited across the energy gap of fractional quantum Hall-effect ground states at =p/q is e^*=/q, a new fundamental quantum of nature, is found to be consistent with experiment. The experimental probe of e^* is ₗₗ^c, obtained from the extrapolated 1/T=0 intercept of the activated region of the Arrhenius plot, which is shown to be constant for p/q fractions of the same q and scale as 1/q^2 for q=3, 5, 7, and 9.