Could a hydrino actually be a composite fermion
COMPOSITE FERMIONS ARE REAL. At low temperature and in a high magnetic field, a two- dimensional gas of electrons (confined at the interface between two semiconductors) can exhibit the quantum Hall effect: as the magnetic field is increased, the Hall resistance (the voltage across the sample divided by the current) rises not linearly but in a series of discrete steps. In one manifestation of the phenomenon, the fractional quantum Hall effect, the strongly interacting electrons behave in a particularly complicated way. In an effort to avoid each other, they form a fluid which consists of electrons that have amalgamated with magnetic flux lines. That is, the electrons each assimilate an even number of magnetic vortices. This process has the effect of partially or totally "using up" the magnetic field. Furthermore, the resultant particles, called composite fermions, interact with each other very little. Recent experiments have shown that composite fermions have many of the properties of true particles: they have mass, execute cyclotron motions in the remaining magnetic field, and have definite energy levels. (J.K. Jain, Science, 18 November 1994.)** * * Composite fermions are bizarre particles in many respects. They represent a new class of particles realized in nature. Previously known fermions were either elementary fermions or their bound states. A composite fermion, on the other hand, is the bound state of an electron and an even number of quantized vortices. The vortex is a collective, topological, quantum object. It is not a degree of freedom in the Hamiltonian but an emergent state of *all *electrons; it has quantum mechanical phases associated with it; and it is a topological entity because the quantum mechanical phase associated with a closed loop around a vortex is exactly 2*π*, independent of the shape and the size of the loop. (The topological character of vortices is implicit in the fact that we *count *them.) As a result, composite fermions are collective, topological, quantum particles. We note: (a) Even a single composite fermion is a collective bound state of all electrons. It is surprising that composite fermions behave as almost free, ordinary particles to a great extent. (b) The quantum mechanical phases associated with the vortex give the composite fermion an inherently quantum mechanical character. While quantum mechanics describes all particles, it is responsible for the very creation of composite fermions. A purely classical world would have no composite fermions. (c) All fluids of composite fermions are topological quantum fluids. The topological quantization of the vortices of composite fermions is responsible for Hall quantization, the effective magnetic field, and numerous other phenomena. The emergence of such a complex particle is a testament to the genuinely collective character of this quantum fluid.* *
