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# Stability and Activation Gaps of the Parafermionic Hall States in the Second Landau Level

## Introduction

In 1998 Read and Rezayi have found  a new hierarchy of incompressible ground states, in the second Landau level, for quantum Hall (QH) fluids corresponding to filling fractions

$$\nu _k=2+\frac{k}{kM+2},\begin{array}{c}k=2,3,4,\mathrm{}\hfill \\ M\mathrm{odd},\hfill \end{array}$$
(1)
(the number $`2`$ in Eq. (1) comes from the two completely filled lowest Landau levels with electrons of both spins). For what follows, it will be convenient to introduce also the particle–hole (PH) conjugated QH fluids corresponding to filling fractions

$$\nu _k^{}=2+\left(1\frac{k}{kM+2}\right),$$
(2)
where the PH conjugation concerns only the last occupied Landau level (assumed polarized). We shall concentrate on the case $`M=1`$, though the general $`M`$ will be kept in most of the formulae. The first plateau ($`k=2`$) in the series (1) and (2) is the mysterious  $`\nu =5/2`$, whose nature is still unclear and whose ground state wave function is believed to have a good overlap with that of the Pfaffian state . The ground state wave functions for the QH fluids with filling factors (1) have been explicitly constructed in  by using the operator product expansion (OPE) of $`_k`$ parafermionic currents  describing the low-energy effective field theory for the edge excitations. A very important feature of these wave functions is their cluster decomposition property , implying that the electrons form clusters of $`k`$-particles which then interact almost like in a Laughlin fluid.

Shortly after the work  Pan et al.  have performed a very precise measurement of the activation energy gap for $`\nu _2=5/2`$, at very low electron temperature, in an extremely high-mobility sample and, for the first time, have found that this plateau is quantized to within 2 ppm. They have also measured the energy gaps corresponding to the strong minima of $`R_{xx}0`$ at $`\nu _4=8/3`$ and $`\nu _4^{}=7/3`$. In addition, well developed minima at $`\nu _3=13/5`$ and $`\nu _5=19/7`$ (with PH conjugates $`\nu _3^{}=12/5`$ and $`\nu _5^{}=16/7`$, respectively) have been seen, however, gap measurements for these plateaux have not been reported since $`R_{xx}0`$. Thus, the first plateaux ($`k=2,3,4`$) in the sequences (1) and (2) for $`M=1`$ have been experimentally observed . A striking fact is that according to the experiment  the $`k=2`$ and $`k=4`$ plateaux are clearly quantized while the $`k=3`$ one is not. On the other hand, the theoretical investigation of the stability of the quantum Hall liquids  (see the stability criteria S1 and S3 in Sect. 3.3 there) implies for the hierarchies (1) and (2) that the bigger the $`k`$ the less stable the fluid, i.e., one should expect that the $`k=3`$ state is more stable (respectively, has a bigger activation gap) than the $`k=4`$ one and the former should be “more visible” than the latter at the same temperature. Here we speak about stability with respect to compression and decompression of the electron fluid, i.e., with respect to deviation of the magnetic field from the center of the plateau. In other words, stability could be expressed in terms of the energy gap of the QH fluid.

In this paper we are trying to give an explanation of the above contradiction between theory and experiment. More precisely, using the conformal field theory (CFT)  description of the edge states , we will show that  the even $`k`$ plateaux are more stable than their odd $`k`$ neighbors, i.e., the energy gaps for the former are expected to be bigger than those for the latter. To this end, we make use of recent studies  of the parafermionic Hall states in terms of a CFT coset construction for the corresponding edge states and the stability criteria in . In particular, we use the chiral partition functions (or CFT characters for all possible boundary conditions which characterize the universal properties of the edge excitations), derived in , to identify the quasiholes of the corresponding fluids and find their CFT dimensions, charges, fluxes and fusion rules (or rules for making composite particles).

We have to make some terminology remarks here. We use the CFT as a low-energy (or large-scale) effective field theory describing the spectrum (charge, spin and statistics) of the edge excitations . There is a selected class of edge excitations which are characterized by the fact that their many-body wave functions, which are realized as CFT correlators, are single-valued in the (complex plane) coordinates of all particles. In the algebraic approach these excitations are represented by relatively local  quantum fields which contain only integer negative powers of the distance in their singular short-distance OPEs and generically form an operator algebra (see, e.g., the condition C4 in ). This algebra completely characterizes the universality class of the QH fluid and is called the chiral (observable) algebra , because the excitations on the edge are chiral; all the excitations (charged and neutral) in it can be generated from the vacuum by applying only local chiral operators. As a consequence, all charged excitations in that algebra carry integer electric charge (in units $`\mathrm{e}=1`$) and satisfy the standard charge–statistics relation  for Bose/Fermi particles in the QH effect context; in particular, the relative locality with themselves imply that the CFT dimensions of these fields must be integer/half-integer. The chiral algebra always contains the Virasoro stress energy tensor  whose commutation relations are characterized by a (positive) number $`c`$, called the central charge, which is related to the Casimir energy on the cylinder . On the other hand, there are excitations, such as the Laughlin quasihole, whose wave functions are single-valued in the coordinates of the electrons (or of the chiral observables in general) but are multi-valued in their own positions111Usually the Laughlin quasihole wave functions are written without the factors containing the relative coordinates of the quasiholes. In the CFT approach these pieces appear automatically when computing the conformal blocks corresponding to the wave functions.. Such excitations cannot be obtained directly from the vacuum (by acting with local operators) but are instead generated by non-local “intertwiners. The latter fields (called also non-local primary fields) are relatively local with the chiral algebra but are not local with themselves; as a consequence, these fields can have fractional charges and obey fractional statistics . From the algebraic point of view, such intertwiners form representations  of the chiral algebra and those of them which have electric charge less than $`1`$ (in absolute value) give the inequivalent irreducible representations (IR)s . The number of the inequivalent IRs was called the topological order . Finally, the CFT describing the edge excitations of the QH fluid is expected to be well-defined on the torus and is therefore supposed to be $`SL(2,)`$ covariant , i.e., it should be a rational CFT 222there is a selected class of theories, known as $`W_{1+\mathrm{}}`$ minimal models , which are not rational CFTs but may succesfully describe the incompressible QH fluids in the principle series. In other words, there is a one–to–one correspondence between the CFTs and QH universality classes. Thus, it is always crucial to have a complete list of IRs of the QH chiral algebra since they characterize the topological properties of all possible quasiparticles in the QH fluid.

Next, a few words about stability, justifying the use of CFT cosets for the QH effect, are in order. As a first step, one would like to reduce (or gauge away) as much as possible the neutral chiral subalgebra (respectively the neutral quasiholes’ state space) for a QH edge since this generically decreases the Virasoro central charge (without changing the QH filling factor) and, according to the stability criterion S1 in , makes the QH fluid more stable. In our case , the coset central charge

$$c_k^{\mathrm{PF}}=\frac{2(k1)}{k+2}$$
(3)
is smaller than the (neutral part of the) original one $`c_k^{(0)}=2(k1)`$. On the other hand, however, reducing the algebra in principle increases the number of IRs and, therefore, decreases the fluid’s stability (S3 criterion in ). However, after any reduction of the chiral algebra, some of the new IRs may become equivalent, hence the number of inequivalent ones actually decreases. This is exactly what happens in the coset – due to the very “symmetric” reduction, there are a lot of equivalences, known as field identifications under the action of the simple currents  (see also Appendix B in ), which effectively reduce the number of IRs and therefore the coset fluid  appears to be much more stable than the original multi-component Luttinger liquid . This first step for the parafermion QH fluids has been accomplished in . As a second step towards a bigger stability, one looks for the maximal (local) extension of the chiral algebra at fixed central charge, since this naturally decreases the number of non-equivalent IRs and further increase the stability of the QH fluid, according to the stability criterion S3 in . However, only bosonic and fermionic fields can be used for such an extension because of the locality requirement .

Our main result is based on the fact, already observed in , that for $`k=2\kappa `$, there are composite fermions/bosons (for $`\kappa `$ odd/even) among the $`_k`$ parafermions which are relatively local and therefore can be added to the chiral algebra. As a consequence, this changes the quasihole identification and increases their CFT dimensions. We find that the quasihole’s CFT dimensions are (for $`M=1`$)

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_k^{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}=\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{k+2}& \mathrm{for}k\mathrm{even}\hfill \\ & \\ \frac{1}{2(k+2)}& \mathrm{for}k\mathrm{odd}\hfill \end{array},$$
(4)
i.e., the quasiholes for the even plateaux have twice bigger dimensions. A similar relation is found as well for the electric charges of the quasiholes. On the other hand, Park and Jain  have found that the energy gaps for the principle series of QH plateaux have universal components proportional to the quasiparticle’s electric charge. We conjecture that the energy gap for the parafermion QH fluid has a universal component too, which should be expressed in terms of the universal characteristics of the quasiparticles, such as the electric charge and the quantum statistics; we find that, for the elementary quasiholes in the parafermion QH states the charge is proportional to their CFT dimension (or statistics) (see the discussion in Sect. 4). Therefore, we could use Eq. (4) to compute the activation energy gaps. Taking into account the gap reduction $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and the renormalization $`\alpha `$ due to the non-zero thickness, Landau level mixing and residual disorder  we use the following measurable gap ansatz (cf. Eq. (3) in )

$$\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_k=\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }_k^{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}\frac{e^2}{4\pi \epsilon l_k}\mathrm{\Gamma },$$
(5)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_k^{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}`$ is given by Eq. (4), $`l_k=\sqrt{\mathrm{}/eB_k}`$ is the magnetic length, $`\epsilon `$ is the dielectric constant ($`\epsilon 12.6\epsilon _0`$ for GaAs) and $`B_k`$ is the magnetic field at the center of the plateau corresponding to the filling factor $`\nu _k`$ (see Table 1). Note that Eq. (5) is not a result of exact or numerical diagonalization of a particular electron interaction. It is based on the conjecture that the gap has a universal component (like in the principle series  where this was found by numerical calculation) and on the stability criteria in .

Fitting the gaps data from  for the two most stable plateaux in the hierarchy (1), $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_2=0.11`$ K and $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_4=0.055`$ K, we find that $`\alpha =0.0063`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.045`$ K for the sample of . This allows us to estimate the energy gaps for the plateaux in the hierarchies (1) and (2) (see Tables 1 and 2 respectively). The gap for the $`\nu =13/5`$ QH state is estimated to be $`15`$ mK, which explains the absence of a Hall plateau in the experiment . This also suggests that the quantization is to be observed for $`T_\mathrm{e}<1`$ mK. Next, we expect that the less expressed $`R_{xx}`$ minimum at magnetic field $`B3.35`$ T in the same sample corresponds to the plateau $`11/4`$ ($`k=6`$), whose estimated activation gap is $`0.029`$ K (plus some interference from the $`14/5`$ ($`k=8`$) state), rather than to $`19/7`$ ($`k=5`$) as supposed by Pan et al. The plateaux with odd $`k>5`$ are not expected to be observed in this sample even at zero temperature and the last observable even $`k`$ plateau in this series is expected to be $`14/5`$.

In addition, a very interesting property of the parafermion QH fluid is found: the quasiparticle excitations satisfy a generalized charge–statistics relation which explicitly connects the fractional electric charge to the fractional quantum statistics. In fact, we believe that this relation is a fundamental characteristics of QH quasiparticles.

Finally, according to our analysis of the stability of the parafermion QH states, we conclude that, at higher temperature, the $`k=2`$ state may prefer quasiparticles with fractional charge $`1/2`$, which obey abelian statistics with $`\theta =\pi /2`$. This defines a new universality class relevant for the $`\nu =5/2`$ QH state, which is different from that of the Moore–Read (MR) state and a (finite temperature) transition between the two phases is possible (see the discussion in Sect. 5).

The rest of this paper is organized as follows: in Sect. 1 we review basic facts about the realization of parafermions as a coset CFT, in Sect. 2 we discuss the consequences of the extension of the chiral algebra in terms of the composite fermions/bosons, in Sect. 3 we investigate the relation between charge and statistics of QH quasiparticles and in Sect. 4 we compute the energy gaps for the parafermionic states using the gap ansatz (5). The numerical results are summarized in Tables 1 and 2.

## 1  The parafermions as a coset

The parafermions are realized in  (see also the references therein) as a “diagonal” affine coset  made in an abelian CFT, which describes the edge of a multi-component chiral Luttinger liquid. More precisely, the topological charge lattice (whose metrics is also known as the $`K`$-matrix) is of the type $`\left(M+2|{}_{}{}^{1}A_{k1}^{}{}_{}{}^{1}A_{k1}^{}\right)`$ in the notation of , where it was called a maximally symmetric (chiral) quantum Hall lattice. The charge vector $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{Q}}`$, whose square gives the filling factor , in this $`K`$-matrix model has components $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{Q}}=(1,0,\mathrm{},0)`$ in the dual lattice  implying that this liquid possesses a large number of neutral degrees of freedom, which could be described by the Kac–Moody algebra  $`\widehat{su(k)_1}\widehat{su(k)_1}`$. The $`_k`$-parafermions  are obtained here by the affine coset

$$\mathrm{PF}_k=\frac{\widehat{su(k)_1}\widehat{su(k)_1}}{\widehat{su(k)_2}},$$
(6)
where the “diagonal” subalgebra $`\widehat{su(k)_2}`$ in the denominator is generated by $`J^a=J_{(1)}^a+J_{(2)}^a`$ and $`J_{(i)}^a(z)`$ are the currents in the two copies of $`\widehat{su(k)_1}`$ in the numerator . The central charge for the coset (6) is given by  Eq. (3). The above mentioned $`su(k)\times su(k)`$ symmetry becomes more transparent if we write the dual pair isomorphism

$$\widehat{u(1)}\widehat{su(k)_1}\widehat{su(k)_1}\widehat{su(2k)_1}\widehat{su(2)_k}\widehat{su(k)_2}.$$

The $`\widehat{su(2)_k}`$ Kac–Moody algebra here is simply the usual spin algebra of $`k`$ pairs of (chiral, complex) Dirac–Weyl fermions corresponding to $`k`$ different layers (one pair for each layer), while the $`\widehat{su(k)_2}`$ is just their layer symmetry. Gauging away the latter subalgebra actually removes the layer symmetry, i.e., projects all particles to the same layer, which gives another viewpoint for the understanding of the clustering mechanism and the non-abelian statistics of quasiparticles in these fluids .

We have to stress that the consistency of the neutral projection in Eq. (6) requires decoupling of neutral and charged degrees of freedom. However, in the original $`K`$-matrix theory they are not completely separated . For the solution of this problem the spin–charge separation is obtained in a decomposable sub-lattice of the original one . The price one has to pay is the appearance of a $`_k`$ pairing rule  (PR)  for combining neutral and charged excitations of the decomposable lattice. More precisely, the IRs of the original $`K`$-matrix chiral algebra can be labeled  by the (fractional part of the) $`\widehat{u(1)}`$ charge $`l`$ and the $`\widehat{su(k)_1}\widehat{su(k)_1}`$ weights $`(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu ,\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\rho )`$, where $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu `$, $`\mu =0,\mathrm{},k1`$ are the su($`k`$) fundamental weights ($`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_0=0`$), such that the PR holds, i.e., $`\mu +\rho =l\mathrm{mod}k`$. Furthermore, the coset reduction in the neutral part is generically supposed to preserve this PR – now it couples the parafermionic $`_k`$-charge to the electric charge . This inheritance of excitation pairing is one of the main advantages of the coset realization (6) of the $`_k`$ parafermions as compared to the more standard $`\widehat{su(2)_k}/\widehat{u(1)}`$ coset . Another advantage of the diagonal coset approach  is that the original model is abelian, i.e., better understood, in which some more complicated non-abelian objects are projected out.

The IRs for the coset (6), which describe the neutral excitations of the parafermionic QH fluid, are labeled by sums of two $`su(k)`$ fundamental weights

$$\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\rho ,0\mu \rho k1$$

(these actually represent all admissible $`\widehat{su(k)_2}`$ weights ). The conformal dimensions of the corresponding coset primary fields $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{\mathrm{PF}}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\rho )`$ are given by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }^{\mathrm{PF}}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\rho )=\frac{\mu (k\rho )}{k}+\frac{(\rho \mu )(k(\rho \mu ))}{2k(k+2)},0\mu \rho k1.$$
(7)
As mentioned before, the parafermion fluid inherits from the parent $`K`$-matrix model a $`_k`$ PR, which can now be written as follows

$$P=l\mathrm{mod}k,\mathrm{where}P=P\left(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\rho \right)=\mu +\rho \mathrm{mod}k$$
(8)
and $`l`$ is the electric charge label introduced above. This approach allows us to compute all characteristics of the parafermionic fluid using those of the Luttinger liquid plus the coset reduction. In particular, the chiral (grand canonical) partition functions for the complete parafermionic theory ($`l`$ and $`\rho `$ label the electric and neutral sectors respectively )

$$\chi _{l,\rho }(\tau ,\zeta )=\underset{_{l,\rho }}{tr}q^{L_0c/24}\mathrm{e}^{2\pi i\zeta J_0^{\mathrm{el}}},$$

where $`L_0c/24`$ is the chiral Hamiltonian and $`J_0^{\mathrm{el}}`$ is the zero mode of the electric current $`J^{\mathrm{el}}(z)`$ (normalized as usual by $`J^{\mathrm{el}}(z)J^{\mathrm{el}}(w)\nu _k/(zw)^2`$) could be written as follows

$$\chi _{l,\rho }(\tau ,\zeta )=\underset{s=0}{\overset{k1}{}}K_{l+s(kM+2)}(\tau ,k\zeta ;k(kM+2))\mathrm{ch}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{l\rho +s}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{s+\rho }),$$
(9)
where $`l`$ and $`\rho `$ are respectively $`\mathrm{mod}(kM+2)`$ and $`\mathrm{mod}k`$ indices. Here $`K_\lambda (\tau ,k\zeta ;k(kM+2))`$ are the $`\widehat{u(1)}`$ (rational torus of compactification radius $`\sqrt{k(kM+2)}`$) chiral partition functions (here $`q=\mathrm{e}^{2\pi i\tau }`$, $`2\pi R\mathrm{Im}\tau =1/k_BT`$, $`2\pi \mathrm{Re}\zeta =V_0/k_BT`$, $`2\pi \mathrm{Im}\zeta =\mu /k_BT`$, where $`T`$ is the temperature, $`k_B`$ – the Boltzmann constant, $`\mu `$ – the chemical potential and $`V_0`$ is the Hall difference between the edges ), and $`\mathrm{ch}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\rho )`$ are the parafermion (neutral) partition functions written in the universal chiral partition function (UCPF) form  $`\mathrm{ch}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\rho )\mathrm{ch}_{\rho \mu }^\rho (\tau ;\mathrm{PF}_k)`$, where $`0\mu \rho k1`$. The concrete forms of these partition functions can be found in , however, they are not important for our discussion and we only mention that all the sectors could be obtained uniquely  if $`0\rho \mu \rho k1`$.

Each term in the sum in Eq. (9) satisfies the PR (8) and represents some (basic) quasiparticle excitation

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_{l,\rho ,s}(z)=:\mathrm{e}^{i\frac{l+s(kM+2)}{\sqrt{k(kM+2)}}\varphi (z)}:\mathrm{\Phi }^{\mathrm{PF}}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{l\rho +s}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\rho +s})(z)$$
(10)
of the parafermionic QH fluid. The electric charge $`Q`$ and the total conformal dimension $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ of (10) read

$`Q`$ $`=`$ $`k{\displaystyle \frac{l+s(kM+2)}{k(kM+2)}}=s+{\displaystyle \frac{l}{kM+2}},`$ (11)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(l+s(kM+2))^2}{2k(kM+2)}}+\mathrm{\Delta }^{\mathrm{PF}}\left(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{l\rho +s}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{s+\rho }\right),`$ (12)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{\mathrm{PF}}`$ is given by Eq. (7) and $`l`$ and $`\rho `$ take the same values as in Eq. (9). The physical hole operator ($`l=\rho =0`$, $`s=1`$) is represented by the tensor product satisfying the PR (8)

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{hole}}(z)=:\mathrm{e}^{i\frac{kM+2}{\sqrt{k(kM+2)}}\varphi (z)}:\mathrm{\Psi }_1(z)$$

of the parafermion current $`\mathrm{\Psi }_1=\mathrm{\Phi }^{\mathrm{PF}}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_1+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_1)`$ with the $`\widehat{u(1)}`$ part vertex exponent ($`\varphi (z)`$ being the chiral boson  such that $`i\varphi (z)=J^{\mathrm{el}}(z)/\sqrt{\nu _k}`$ ). It is characterized by the $`s=1`$ term in $`\chi _{0,0}`$ and has the following charge, flux (in units of flux quanta) and conformal dimension

$$Q_{\mathrm{hole}}=1,\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{hole}}=\frac{kM+2}{k},\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{hole}}=\frac{M+2}{2}.$$
(13)
Notice that the dimension of the hole (respectively, of the electron) is independent of $`k`$ and for $`M=1`$ is always $`3/2`$ so that the stability criterion (S2) in  gives no restriction here.

Remark 1. The fact that the flux (13) attached to holes (respectively, to electrons) is not integer in the vacuum super-selection sector, implies that these could not live alone, because of flux quantization, but should rather form clusters of $`k`$ objects  (the only exception is the case $`k=2`$ where the hole’s flux is integer and the edge electrons are not paired ). We stress that such a phenomenon of electron clustering is always supposed to take place when the numerator of the filling factor is bigger than $`1`$, e.g., in the principle series of filling fractions.

Similarly, the quasihole operator ($`l=1`$, $`\rho =s=0`$) is identified with

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}(z)=:\mathrm{e}^{i\frac{1}{\sqrt{k(kM+2)}}\varphi (z)}:\sigma _1(z),$$
(14)
where $`\sigma _1=\mathrm{\Phi }^{\mathrm{PF}}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_0+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_1)`$ is the “spin” field corresponding to the lowest charge and dimension IR of the coset. It is also worth-noting that it generates all the other IRs by multiple fusion with itself. The field (14) is characterized by the $`s=0`$ term in $`\chi _{1,0}`$ so that its charge and total conformal dimension are

$$Q_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}=\frac{1}{kM+2},\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}=\frac{1}{k},\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}^{(M=1)}=\frac{1}{2(k+2)}.$$
(15)
Again, the quasiholes are enforced to form clusters of $`k`$ because of flux quantization.

The electric charge of the quasihole coincides with the minimal possible charge $`Q_{\mathrm{min}}=1/(\mathrm{}d_H)`$ in a QH fluid, according to Eqs. (67–69) in , where $`d_H=kM+2`$ is the denominator of the filling factor and $`\mathrm{}=1`$ is the charge parameter . To make contact with the notation in  we notice that the the conformal dimension of the parafermion $`\mathrm{\Psi }_1`$ is $`(k1)/k`$ so that the order  of this simple current is $`\mathrm{ord}(\mathrm{\Psi }_1)=k`$, while $`r(\mathrm{\Psi }_1)=2`$ coincides with its $`_k`$-parafermion charge.

## 2 Composite particles and the maximal chiral algebra extension for $`k=2\kappa `$

As already mentioned in the Introduction, the case $`k=2\kappa `$, with $`\kappa `$ a positive integer, is more delicate. The reason is that, according to Eq. (7), the parafermion primary field labeled by  $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa `$ (which is, in fact, the parafermion current denoted by $`\psi _\kappa `$ in ) in the neutral sector

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_\kappa ^{(0)}=\mathrm{\Phi }^{\mathrm{PF}}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa ),\mathrm{\Delta }^{\mathrm{PF}}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa )=\kappa /2$$
(16)
has a half-integer/integer (neutral) conformal dimension $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{\mathrm{PF}}`$ for $`\kappa `$ odd/even. Next, in order to form an allowed quasiparticle excitation, this parafermion current must be combined with some charged operator $`:\mathrm{e}^{i\frac{l}{\sqrt{k(kM+2)}}\varphi (z)}:`$ in such a way that the PR (8) holds, i.e., $`2\kappa =l\mathrm{mod}k`$, which has only one solution333only for $`k=2`$, $`M=1`$ the solutions are two: $`l=2,0`$ , $`l=0`$, in the interval $`(kM+2)/2l(kM+2)/21`$ (i.e., $`l\mathrm{mod}(kM+2)`$ like in Eq. (9) ) for $`M=1`$ and $`k>2`$. Therefore, $`l=0`$ defines a unique neutral chiral “observable” composite particle

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_\kappa (z)=1\mathrm{\Psi }_\kappa ^{(0)}(z),\mathrm{\Delta }_\kappa =\mathrm{\Delta }_\kappa ^{\mathrm{PF}}=\kappa /2,Q_\kappa =\mathrm{\Phi }_\kappa =0,$$
(17)
which could be physically interpreted  as made from $`\kappa `$ particles $`\mathrm{\Psi }_\mathrm{p}=:\mathrm{e}^{i\frac{1}{\sqrt{\nu }}\varphi (z)}:\mathrm{\Phi }^{\mathrm{PF}}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{k1}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{k1})`$ and $`(kM+2)/2`$ flux 444Note that the field representing a quantum of flux does satisfy the PR (8) (i.e., $`0=k\mathrm{mod}k`$) and is therefore a valid excitation of the parafermion QH fluid  $`:\mathrm{e}^{i\frac{k}{\sqrt{k(kM+2)}}\varphi (z)}:`$. These neutral composites have half-integer/integer total conformal dimensions $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\kappa `$, are always (super)local with themselves (in addition to being local with the entire chiral algebra – see the relative locality discussion in the Introduction) and by convention should belong to the chiral (super)algebra rather than to the set of its representations. In other words, the original chiral algebra must be extended by the neutral composite (17) since it is simply a boson for $`\kappa `$ even and a fermion for $`\kappa `$ odd according to the standard spin–statistics relation $`2\mathrm{\Delta }_\kappa =\theta /\pi \mathrm{mod}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}`$ ($`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ in this case gives the conformal spin). Note also that the existence of the field (17) does not contradict the charge–statistics relation (C3 in ) since this field is neutral. Moreover, such a field must exist in order to restore the standard charge–statistics relation for the cluster containing $`\kappa `$ electrons. The point is that the flux composite containing $`\kappa +1`$ flux corresponds to electric charge $`\kappa `$, however, it is always a boson since its conformal dimension is $`\kappa (\kappa +1)/2`$, which is integer. Therefore, to create a cluster of $`\kappa `$ electrons one needs a neutral particle, such as (17), which is a boson/fermion when $`\kappa `$ is even/odd.

The above extension defines a different rational CFT, which satisfies all necessary conditions  for a QH edge effective field theory. Therefore, the extended rational CFT identifies a new universality class for the $`\nu =5/2`$, which is different from that for the MR state.

The neutral composites (17) are fundamental in the sense that their correlation functions are single-valued and, as a consequence of Ward identities, the parafermionic component of the stress tensor could be expressed as

$$T^{\mathrm{PF}}(w)=\frac{k1}{k(k+2)}\underset{zw}{lim}\left(\frac{}{z}\frac{}{w}\right)^2\left[(zw)^\kappa \mathrm{\Psi }_\kappa (z)\mathrm{\Psi }_\kappa (w)\right].$$

The importance of the neutral composite (17) stems from the fact that the ordinary electron dropped into the QH fluid, for $`k=2\kappa `$, splits into $`(kM+2)/2`$ elementary quasiparticles of both kind (q.p.1 and q.p.2 in the lattice description, i.e., before making the coset projection ) and one composite (17)

$$1\mathrm{e}\frac{kM+2}{2}(\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.1+\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.2)+1\mathrm{comp}.$$
(18)
To demonstrate that, we note that the pair (1 hole — 1 electron) has no long-range Aharonov–Bohm effects  (i.e., it is characterized by a trivial topological charge) and therefore must be invisible in the adiabatic transport of any excitation around it. Consider a cluster consisting of 1 hole, described  by the lattice charge $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{q}}_{\mathrm{hole}}=(kM+2)\underset{¯}{\mathrm{e}}_1^{}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_1^{(\alpha )}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_1^{(\beta )}`$, and $`(kM+2)/2`$ quasiparticles of both kinds, described by the lattice charges  $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{q}}_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.1}=\underset{¯}{\mathrm{e}}_1^{}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{k1}^{(\alpha )}`$ and $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{q}}_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.2}=\underset{¯}{\mathrm{e}}_1^{}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{k1}^{(\beta )}`$, where $`\{\underset{¯}{\mathrm{e}}_1^{},\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_i^{(\alpha )},\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_i^{(\beta )},i=1\mathrm{}k1\}`$ is the basis of the dual decomposable lattice , with $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_i^{(\alpha )}`$ and $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_i^{(\beta )}`$ being the fundamental weights of the two su($`k`$) algebras, and $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{e}}_1^{}=\underset{¯}{\mathrm{Q}}/k`$ . When we “fuse” the above mentioned quasiparticles, i.e., when we put all coordinates to the same point, the resulting object has a topological charge

$$(\kappa M+1)\left(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{q}}_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.1}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{q}}_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.2}\right)+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{q}}_\mathrm{h}=\kappa \left(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_1^{(\alpha )}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_1^{(\beta )}\right),$$
(19)
which is just the sum of the above lattice charges. The right hand side of Eq. (19) is equivalent to $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa ^{(\alpha )}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa ^{(\beta )}`$ since for the su($`k`$) weights one has555recall that two su($`k`$) weights are equivalent iff their difference belongs to the root lattice $`a\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_j\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{aj\mathrm{mod}k}`$, $`a`$. Note that the combination with charge (19) carries zero electric charge (and, respectively, zero magnetic flux), however, it is not trivial since $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa `$ does not belong to the su($`2\kappa `$) root lattice. Therefore, a neutral quasiparticle must be added in order to make the lattice charge (19) trivial; we note that the neutral composite (17), whose lattice charge is $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{q}}_{\mathrm{comp}}=\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa ^{(\alpha )}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa ^{(\beta )}`$, exactly compensates the topological charge excess in Eq. (19) provided that

$$\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa ^{(\alpha )}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa ^{(\alpha )}=\underset{i=1}{\overset{\kappa 1}{}}i(\underset{¯}{\alpha }^i+\underset{¯}{\alpha }^{ki})+\kappa \underset{¯}{\alpha }^\kappa 0$$

(and similarly for $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^{(\beta )}`$). In other words, the topological charge of the cluster

$$1\mathrm{comp}+1\mathrm{h}+(\kappa M+1)(\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.1+\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.2)$$
(20)
is trivial, i.e., $`(\kappa M+1)\left(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{q}}_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.1}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{q}}_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.2}\right)+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{q}}_\mathrm{h}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{q}}_{\mathrm{comp}}0`$, so that (20) is completely invisible in the adiabatic transport of any excitation around it, as shown on Fig. 1; this is equivalent to the statement (18).

After taking the coset this picture does not change since the projection is supposed to preserve  the neutral component $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_1^{(\alpha )}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_1^{(\beta )}`$ of the physical hole and consequently preserves its $`\kappa `$-th fusion power. The difference is now that the quasiparticles of both types become indistinguishable and their statistics become non-abelian . Nevertheless, the above adiabatic transport could be analyzed in a similar way taking into account the “non-abelian” fusion rules  leading to the same conclusion that the electron in the $`k=2\kappa `$ case has a non-trivial neutral component given by (17).

Remark 2.  The topological charge of the cluster (18), for the parafermion coset (6), has components in more than one super-selection sector due to the non-abelian fusion rules . In that case, the charge of (18) must be projected onto the vacuum sector which is characterized by periodic/anti-periodic boundary conditions for the bosonic/fermionic currents.

One consequence of the chiral algebra extension is that the “extended ” QH fluid is expected to be more stable than the original one. The point is that any extended algebra has less (or at least the same number) of IRs, as compared to the original one, since the IRs of the former must be constructed from those IRs of the latter which are in addition relatively local with respect to (17). According to the stability criterion S3 in , reducing the number of admissible IRs would further increase the stability of the QH fluid. Let us consider this in more detail. The operator product expansion of the field (16) with any coset IR’s primary field $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{\mathrm{PF}}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\rho )`$ is determined by the fusion rule  $`\left(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa \right)\times \left(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\rho \right)=\left(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\mu +\kappa }+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\rho +\kappa }\right)`$ (all indices are taken $`\mathrm{mod}k`$) so that

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_\kappa ^{(0)}(z)\mathrm{\Phi }^{\mathrm{PF}}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\rho )(w)(zw)^{\frac{\mu +\rho }{2}}\mathrm{\Phi }^{\mathrm{PF}}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\mu +\kappa }+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\rho +\kappa })(w),$$

where the power of $`(zw)`$ is determined by matching the CFT dimensions (7) of both sides. Therefore, only those IR’s primary fields of the original chiral algebra are relatively local with (16) which satisfy

$$P=\mu +\rho =0\mathrm{mod}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}.$$
(21)
This “even $`_k`$-charge restriction” reduces half of the IRs of the original algebra. It is not difficult to express the chiral partition functions $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{l,\rho }(\tau ,\zeta )`$ corresponding to the extended algebra in terms of those (9) for the original one. First of all, the even-charge restriction (21) implies that the parameter $`l`$ in the original characters (9) must be even since $`P(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{l\rho +s}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\rho +s})=2s+l`$ is supposed to be even. Second, since the only field in the extended algebra which does not belong to the original one is (16), naturally we have

$`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{2l,\rho }(\tau ,\zeta )`$ $`\stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}`$ $`\chi _{2l,\rho }(\tau ,\zeta )+\chi _{2l,\rho +\kappa }(\tau ,\zeta )={\displaystyle \underset{s=0}{\overset{\kappa 1}{}}}K_{l+s(\kappa M+1)}(\tau ,\kappa \zeta ;\kappa (\kappa M+1))\times `$
$`\times `$ $`\left[\mathrm{ch}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{l\rho +s}+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\rho +s})+\mathrm{ch}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{l\rho +s+\kappa }+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\rho +s+\kappa })\right],`$ (22)
where we have used the identity  $`K_{2l}(\tau ,2\zeta ;4m)+K_{2l+2m}(\tau ,2\zeta ;4m)=K_l(\tau ,\zeta ;m)`$.

Remark 3. Only primary fields with half-integer or integer CFT dimensions can be used to extend the chiral algebra. Extending the algebra with $`\mathrm{\Psi }_\kappa ^{(0)}`$ (for $`k=2\kappa `$, $`\kappa `$ integer) automatically extends the $`\widehat{u(1)}`$ algebra with $`:\mathrm{exp}(\pm i\sqrt{\kappa (\kappa M+1)}\varphi (z)):`$ because the corresponding quantum numbers $`Q=\pm \kappa `$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\kappa (\kappa +1)/2`$ are found in the vacuum character $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{0,0}(\tau ,\zeta )`$ for $`s=0`$ and the vacuum module is isomorphic to the chiral algebra. Therefore, the extension with the field (16) is the maximal one.

Next, we need to determine the possible values of $`l`$ and $`\rho `$ which give all the independent characters (2). We find

$`\mathrm{\#}\{2l\}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\#}\{0,2,4,\mathrm{},(kM+2)2\}={\displaystyle \frac{kM+2}{2}},`$ (23)
$`\mathrm{\#}\{\rho \}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\#}\left\{\rho \right|0\rho \kappa \rho \}=\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa }{2}}\right]+1,`$ (24)
where $`[x/2]`$ stands for the integer part of $`x/2`$. The range of $`2l`$ comes from the even-charge restriction (21). To understand how the range of $`\rho `$ is determined we first use the following symmetry of (2)

$$\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{2l,\rho +\kappa }(\tau ,\zeta )=\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{2l,\rho }(\tau ,\zeta )0\rho \kappa 1$$
(25)
to reduce the number of non-equivalent choices of $`\rho `$, and next consider only the $`s=0`$ term in (2) keeping in mind that the other terms are obtained by the action of the simple currents (expressed by the $`\mathrm{mod}\kappa `$ sum in (2)) and represent the same IR of the full $`\widehat{u(1)}\times \mathrm{PF}_k`$ theory. In addition, since we are interested in the neutral degeneracy, we can fix an arbitrary value of charge, for example $`2l=0`$, and consider the $`s=0`$ neutral character in $`\stackrel{~}{\chi _{0,0}}`$

$$\left[\mathrm{ch}\left(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\rho +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{k\rho }\right)+\mathrm{ch}\left(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\rho +\kappa }+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\kappa \rho }\right)\right],$$
(26)
which could be labeled by the smallest of the 4 $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$’s indices. We have $`\rho <k\rho `$ and $`\kappa \rho \kappa +\rho `$, due to the range (25), so that the character (26) could be labeled by the smaller of the numbers $`\rho ,\kappa \rho `$. Thus we find the restriction for $`\rho `$ to be $`0\rho \kappa \rho `$ which gives (24).

One important characteristics of the universality class of any QH fluid is the topological order . In the $`k=2\kappa `$ case this number is given by

$$\mathrm{TO}(k=2\kappa )=\mathrm{\#}\{2l\}\mathrm{\#}\{\rho \}=(\kappa M+1)\left(\left[\frac{\kappa }{2}\right]+1\right),$$
(27)
which is just the product of the two ranges (23) and (24). We stress that this number is smaller than the general-$`k`$ number (conjectured in  and derived in )

$$\mathrm{TO}(k)=\frac{(kM+2)(k+1)}{2}$$
(28)
computed for $`k`$ even, which is the main justification of the chiral algebra extension presented above since, according to the stability criterion S3 in , the less this number the more stable the fluid. (Note that the topological order for $`k`$ odd is still given by Eq. (28).)

Now, we can see the difference between the odd-$`k`$ and the even-$`k`$ cases. The coset primary field with the lowest non-zero charge and dimension for $`k`$ odd is labeled by $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_0+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_1`$, while for $`k`$ even it is $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_0+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_2`$; the reason is that $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_0+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_1`$ does not satisfy the even-charge restriction (21), i.e., it is not relatively local with respect to (16). Therefore, the dimensions of the quasiholes for the $`k`$-even case would be given by a formula different from Eq. (15). Indeed, since the field $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{\mathrm{PF}}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_0+\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_2)`$ is characterized by the $`s=0`$ term in $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{2,0}(\tau ,\zeta )`$ the elementary charge and CFT-dimension is (according to Eq. (14) for $`M=1`$, and Eq. (11) and (12) for $`s=0`$, $`l=2`$, $`\rho =0`$)

$$Q_{k=2\kappa }^{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}=\frac{2}{k+2},\mathrm{\Delta }_{k=2\kappa }^{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}=\frac{1}{k+2}.$$
(29)
For clarity, the quasiholes’ charges and dimensions for the first 10 plateaux in the parafermionic hierarchies (1) and (2) are given in Table 1.

We stress here that the quantum numbers $`P`$ in Eq. (8), of the parafermionic currents $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{\mathrm{PF}}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu )`$ in the $`k=2\kappa `$ case generate only an even-charge subgroup $`_\kappa _{2\kappa }`$. In this case, however, one can redefine the parafermion charge (8) as follows

$$P^{}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\rho )\stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}\frac{P(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\mu +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\rho )}{2}\mathrm{mod}k,$$
(30)
for $`\mu +\rho =0\mathrm{mod}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}`$, in agreement with Eq. (21). The new charge $`P^{}`$ belongs to $`_{2\kappa }`$ and is preserved under the fusion rules . In addition, for all IRs satisfying Eq. (21), one can define a chiral fermion parity according to $`\gamma _F=P^{}\mathrm{mod}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}`$.

In particular, the composite particles (17) have a $`_k`$ charge $`P(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa )=2\kappa =0\mathrm{mod}k`$, while their modified parafermion charge (30) is $`P^{}(\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa +\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_\kappa )=\kappa `$ and thus $`\gamma _F=\kappa \mathrm{mod}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}`$, in agreement with the discussion after Eq. (17).

## 3 Relations between charge, spin and statistics of QH quasiparticles

Despite the fact that the electrons in a QH fluid are non-relativistic their low-energy collective excitations (quasiparticles and quasiholes) are believed  to satisfy a generalized spin–statistics relation

$$2\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}=\frac{\theta _{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}}{\pi }=S_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}+S_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.},$$
(31)
(in general this must be a $`\mathrm{mod}`$ relation, however, for the elementary quasiholes (14) and quasiparticles it is exact ), where the CFT dimension $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}=\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.}`$ is actually the average spin of the pair (quasiparticle–quasihole) and $`\theta _{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}`$ is the statistical angle. Eq. (31) explains why the CFT dimensions can be identified with the quantum statistics of the quasiparticles.

On the other hand, there is a very interesting relation between the charge and the statistics of the QH quasiparticles corresponding to the Read–Rezayi states, namely, the electric charges (11) and CFT dimensions (12) are related (we set $`M=1`$ for simplicity) by a generalized charge–statistics relation

$$2\mathrm{\Delta }=Q+\frac{2n}{d_H},$$
(32)
where $`d_H=k+2`$ is the denominator of the filling factor and

$$2n=d_H\left[\mu (\mu +1)+2b\mu \right]+2b(\rho ^{}\mu )+kb(b1)$$
(33)
is an even integer. Given the parameters $`l`$, $`\rho `$ and $`s`$ of the excitation (10), the new parameters $`\mu ,\rho ^{}_k`$, and $`a,b,c`$ entering Eq. (33) are uniquely determined from

$`\mathrm{min}(l\rho +s,\rho +s)`$ $`=`$ $`\mu +ak,b=s\mu +a+c`$
$`\mathrm{max}(l\rho +s,\rho +s)`$ $`=`$ $`\rho ^{}+ck.`$
Note that the elementary quasiholes ($`l=1`$, $`\rho =0`$, $`s=0`$ for $`k`$ odd and $`l=2`$, $`\rho =0`$, $`s=0`$ for $`k`$ even) satisfy Eq. (32) with $`n=0`$, i.e.,

$$2\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}=Q_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}.$$
(34)
The elementary quasiparticles ($`l=1`$, $`\rho =0`$, $`s=0`$ for $`k`$ odd and $`l=2`$, $`\rho =0`$, $`s=0`$ for $`k`$ even) satisfy Eq. (32) with $`n=1`$, and $`n=2`$ respectively, however, in both cases one has

$$2\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.}=|Q_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.}|.$$
(35)
Both Eqs. (34) and (35) together with the spin–statistics relation (31) explicitly relate the fractional charge of the (elementary) QH quasiparticles to their fractional statistics . This looks natural because spin in 2D is an additive quantum number (like the electric charge), though this additivity, which in CFT language is called “matching CFT dimensions”, is masked in OPEs by the powers of the distance (in other words, spin can partially transform into relative orbital momentum when building a composite particle). Nevertheless, for “indecomposable” primary fields, such as the quasihole, which cannot be generated in the right hand side of an OPE of other fields with smaller CFT dimensions, this additivity amounts to a linear relation between charge and spin. We stress that the quantum statistics of a quasiparticle is usually computed by Berry phase technique , however, this computation explicitly uses the quasiparticle wave functions that are in general not known. The advantage of the generalized charge–statistics relation (34) is that it determines the quasihole’s CFT dimension (respectively, statistics) in terms of the minimal electric charge, which is fixed by the filling factor. This gives another viewpoint on the relation between the precisely quantized (fractional) Hall conductivity and the sharp quantization of the (fractional) electric charge.

It is important to note that general multi-electron clusters that are bosons/fermions for even/odd electric charge satisfy Eq. (32) with $`n=md_H`$ ($`m`$) thus reproducing the standard charge–statistics relation (see e.g. Eq. (31) in ).

Finally, we expect that the generalized charge–statistics relations (32), (34) and (35) go beyond the scope of the Read–Rezayi states in the second Landau level. We believe that such relations are fundamental characteristics of the QH fluids  and we expect them to hold also in the principle series $`\nu =n/(2n+1)`$ of QH filling fractions.

## 4 Energy gaps for the parafermion QH fluids

In this section we compute the energy gaps for the parafermionic Hall states in the second Landau level. To this end, we use Eq. (5) with $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}`$ derived from the effective field theory at the edge. Before going into the details of the calculation we have to make several remarks. First of all, the number $`(2n+1)^1`$, which appears in the gap formula Eq. (3) in , is generically the charge of the quasihole. In our case, however, this charge turns out to be twice the CFT dimension of the quasihole operator (see Eqs. (34) and (35)) which justifies the ansatz (5). It is worth-recalling the “conventional wisdom”  that (i) the non-zero thickness in the transversal direction and Landau level mixing simply renormalize $`\alpha `$ in (5) (ii) the Landau level broadening due to the residual disorder simply reduces the gap by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and (iii) $`\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ are approximately independent of $`k`$ (resp. of $`\nu _k`$). Second, we recall that usually the conformal dimensions are related to the energies of the edge excitations, whose effective chiral Hamiltonian is  $`v(L_0c/24)/R`$ , where $`L_0`$ is the zero mode of the Virasoro stress tensor, $`v`$ is the edge states velocity and $`R`$ the radius of the edge circle, i.e., all excitations become gapless in the thermodynamic limit $`R\mathrm{}`$. However, since this CFT describes the edge of an incompressible QH fluid, where the bulk charge-density waves are suppressed by an energy gap, this means that any localized charged excitation in the bulk is completely transmitted to the edge and is seen there as an edge excitation carrying all quantum numbers (such as topological charges and quantum statistics) of its bulk counterpart. The point is that the ideal gap is proportional to some universal quantity, such as the quasiparticle’s electric charge, which can be computed at the edge.

We speculate that Eq. (5) admits an interpretation of the energy gap as the centrifugal barrier for creating the minimal spin dictated by the statistics of quasiparticles, which, on the other hand, is determined by the filling factor. Indeed, if we assume that the quasiparticle energy gap is proportional to its spin, then the average gap $`ϵ`$ of the pair (q.p.–q.h.) is proportional to the average spin, which, according to the spin–statistics relation (31), is exactly equal to the quantum statistics , respectively, to the CFT dimension of the quasihole

$$\frac{ϵ_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.}+ϵ_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}}{2}\frac{S_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{p}.}+S_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}}{2}=\frac{\theta _{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}}{2\pi }=\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}.$$

In realistic cases, one has to take into account the non-universal effects (see (i), (ii) and (iii) above) as in Eq. (5). Next, the charge–statistics relations (34) and (35) relate the (ideal) energy gap to the electric charge of the elementary quasiparticle, which is equal to the denominator of the filling factor, thus reproducing Eq. (3) in .

Now, let us go back to Eq. (5). The two constants $`\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ could be determined by fitting the measured energy gaps for the two most stable plateaux $`k=2`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_2=0.110`$ K and $`k=4`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_4=0.055`$ K. We find that

$$\alpha =0.0063,\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.045\mathrm{K},$$
(36)
which allows us to compute the other activation gaps in the hierarchies (1) and (2) for the sample of . Note that $`\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ (depending on the particle density and layer thicknes) are not universal and must be re-fitted for any other sample.

The more important data about the plateaux (1) in the sample of  is summarized in Table 1. In Table 2 we give the similar data for the PH conjugate plateaux (2). In both tables $`M=1`$, the average electron density $`n_e2.2\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2 is taken from , the magnetic field, $`B_k`$ for the hierarchy(1) and $`B_k^{}`$ for the hierarchy(2), is measured in T. The quasiholes’ charges $`Q_k^{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}`$ are measured in units in which the electron charge is $`1`$. The CFT dimensions of the quasiholes are $`\mathrm{\Delta }_k^{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}`$, $`\mathrm{TO}(k)`$ is the topological order and the measurable activation energy gaps $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_k`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }^{}}_k`$ are given in K. The gaps are given to 2 significant figures because the gaps for $`k=2`$ and $`k=4`$ were measured with this precision and in order to be able to compare these predictions with the experiment. The values of the quasiholes’ charges $`Q_k^{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}`$, CFT dimensions $`\mathrm{\Delta }_k^{\mathrm{q}.\mathrm{h}.}`$ and topological order $`\mathrm{TO}(k)`$ in Table 2 are the same like those corresponding to the same $`k`$ in Table 1.

The $`k=2`$ plateau is common for both Tables since it is self-conjugate. The $`8/3`$ plateau appears as $`k=4`$ in Table 1 and as $`k=1`$ in Table 2, while the plateau $`7/3`$ appears in reverse order. Notice that the $`k=1`$ states are actually a Laughlin states, as mentioned in . This is directly seen from the $`k`$-body interaction , as well as from the coset (6), which gives trivial neutral part and the remaining CFT is $`\widehat{u(1)}`$ with compactification radius $`3`$. We see that, in general, the gaps for the PH-conjugate states (2) are slightly bigger than those for (1) because the magnetic length in the former is smaller than that in the latter. However, the experimental gap ($`0.10`$ K) for $`\nu _4^{}=7/3`$ is much bigger  than the gap ($`0.055`$ K) of its conjugate, the $`\nu _4=8/3`$ one, which cannot be explained by the smaller magnetic length only. This can be explained by the fact that the Laughlin states for $`k=1`$ have bigger gaps than the $`k=4`$ parafermion states, according to the stability criterion S3 in , because the topological order of the former is $`3`$ while that for the latter is $`6`$ (after the extension). Nevertheless, this makes no difference in Eq. (5) since the electric charges of the quasiholes of both $`k=1`$ and $`k=4`$ states are equal.

We stress that it is in first approximation that $`\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in Eq. (5) are independent of the filling factor, so that one cannot expect a perfect overlap with the experiment. If we accept, comparing to the result in , that the accuracy is not better than $`30\%`$ then the gap for the plateau at $`\nu =13/5`$ should be $`15\pm 5`$ mK, while that for $`\nu =7/3`$ is $`62\pm 20`$ mK. Nevertheless, this approximation seems to be sufficient to determine the structure of plateaux in the parafermionic hierarchy. Note that without the extension of the chiral algebra for $`k`$ even, the gap for $`\nu =13/5`$, computed by our gap ansatz (5), would be $`77\pm 25`$ mK, which obviously contradicts the experimental data , which suggests that this value is $`10`$ mK.

Taking into account that the electron temperature $`T_e`$ at which $`\nu _2=5/2`$ is already quantized is  $`T_e8`$ mK, we expect that the $`\nu _3=13/5`$ plateau quantization could be observed at $`T_e1`$ mK in the same sample. In addition, the $`k=8`$ state ($`\nu _8=14/5`$) should be approximately as stable as the $`k=3`$ one ($`\nu _3=13/5`$) (apart from the difference in the magnetic length) and is also expected to be observed at that temperature.

We also conjecture that the $`R_{xx}`$ minimum around $`B3.35`$ T corresponds to $`\nu _6=11/4`$ rather than to $`\nu _5=19/7`$ and more precise measurements down to electron temperatures around $`1.5`$ mK would be necessary in order to confirm this. In the same way, the $`R_{xx}`$ minimum around $`B4.05`$ T corresponds $`\nu _6^{}=9/4`$ rather than to $`\nu _5^{}=16/7`$. The plateaux with $`k>5`$ as well as the $`\nu =19/7`$ one ($`k=5`$ in (1)) are not expected to be observed in the sample of , even at zero temperature, since the gap reduction $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in Eq. (5) is bigger than the (renormalized) ideal gap. The plateaux with even $`k=10`$ ($`\nu =17/6`$ and $`\nu ^{}=13/6`$) are neither expected to be seen, despite the fact that their gaps are big enough, because of the overlaps with the wide integer Hall plateaux at $`\nu =3`$ and $`2`$ respectively. The last plateau in the series (1) observable in the sample of  is expected to be $`14/5`$ ($`k=8`$) for the hierarchy (1) and $`11/5`$ ($`k=8`$) for (2).

An important message to the experiment is to measure the activation gaps for a high-mobility sample at temperatures down to $`1`$ mK, which seem to be accessible . We disagree with the conclusion in  that “the gaps for $`\nu =5/2`$, $`8/3`$ and $`7/3`$ are approximately equal and on the order of $`2`$ K”. Therefore, it would be interesting to check experimentally our predictions for the gaps at $`\nu =7/3`$, $`13/5`$, $`12/5`$, $`16/7`$, $`11/4`$, $`9/4`$, $`14/5`$ and $`11/5`$.

## 5 Summary and discussion

We have demonstrated that the non-monotonic plateaux structure of the parafermionic QH states in the second Landau level can be understood in terms of the effective CFT for the edge states. The main idea is to find the maximal chiral algebra extension since this increases the stability (respectively, the energy gap) of the QH fluid, according to the stability criterion S3 in . However, only bosons and fermions can be used for that purpose and the key observation is that for even $`k`$ there are neutral composite bosons/fermions among the excitations of the parafermion QH states, which can extend the algebra. This reduces the topological order and increases the minimal electric charge, respectively, the activation energy gap.

The detailed analysis of the spectrum of the parafermion edge excitations shows that, in addition to the generalized spin–statistics relation (31), there is an exact charge–statistics relation for the elementary quasiparticles (35) and quasiholes (34). These two relations together with the assumption that the pure gap is proportional to the minimal electric charge, like in the principle series of filling factor , allow us to compute the measurable activation gaps for all plateaux in the hierarchies (1) and (2) for the sample of . In simple words, assuming that the minimal electric charge for $`k`$ even is twice bigger, gives an explanation of the non-monotonic structure of the parafermion plateaux.

We stress that the gap reduction $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in Eq. (36), that we computed for the sample of , appears to be 2 orders of magnitude less than the value estimated in . Although it seems plausible that this non-universal quantity is smaller for the extremely high quality sample of  (since it depends more on the non-zero thickness than on the residual disorder ) we have to make clear that if the realistic gap reduction is bigger, then our argument becomes qualitative. In other words, even if Eq. (5) is not a good approximation, the fact that the extended fluids for $`k`$ even are more stable than the original ones, still may explain the non-monotonic structure of the observed plateaux. In order to check our predictions new activation experiments, down to electron temperature of $`1.5`$ mK, are necessary.

For the $`\nu =5/2`$ state ($`k=2`$) our stability analysis implies that the elementary quasiholes have electric charge $`1/2`$ and obey abelian fractional statistics $`\theta =\pi /2`$. Then the ordinary electron splits into two quasiparticles plus one Majorana fermion at the edge 666This is not surprising since even in the $`K`$-matrix theory the quasiparticle topological charge is not collinear with that of the electron (see Eq. (18)) so that a neutral component is always present.. The ground state wave function is still given by the Pfaffian , however, the structure of the quasihole excitations is different . Thus, the extended rational CFT discussed in Sect. 2 defines a new universality class for the $`\nu =5/2`$ QH state, which is clearly distinguished from the MR one. On the other hand, recent numerical calculations  have shown that the numerical ground state for the pseudopotential Hamiltonian has an excellent overlap with the MR state, which means that most likely at $`T=0`$ the true $`\nu =5/2`$ QH state belongs to the MR universality class. However, one thing characterizing the MR state is that the $`_2`$ symmetry corresponding to the conservation of the chiral fermion parity is spontaneously broken . As temperature increases, this symmetry may be restored driving the system into the abelian phase described above (in which chiral fermion parity is conserved). Thus, one may expect a phase transition  between the two phases, which could be easily detected since the minimal electric charge changes from $`1/4`$ to $`1/2`$. This may possibly explain the kink at $`15`$ mK observed in the activation experiment .

Thus, we conclude that precise quasiparticle charge-measuring experiments, such as shot-noise, especially for temperature in the range $`10÷30`$ mK and a high-mobility sample similar to that of , as well as new activation experiments down to temperature $`1`$ mK, could be really decisive for revealing the nature of the enigmatic $`\nu =5/2`$ state.

I would like to thank Andrea Cappelli, Ivan Todorov and Jürg Fröhlich for fruitful discussions, Wei Pan for kindly offering details from the experiment and the Max-Planck-Institute für Physik Komplexer Systeme in Dresden for hospitality and financial support. This work was supported by DFG through Schwerpunktprogramm “Quanten-Hall-Systeme” under the program “Konforme Feldtheorie der Quanten-Hall-Plateau-Übergänge”.


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## 1 Introduction

The start of regular operations of several 8-m class telescopes has created a new demand for large imaging surveys. However, in contrast to other ongoing all-sky surveys, there is a pressing need for customized surveys designed in support of programs to be conducted using large-aperture telescopes. These surveys should be capable of providing data sets from which samples suitable to the instrumentation available on these telescopes can be drawn, in particular reaching magnitudes comparable to their spectroscopic limit. Currently, most of the major observatories are involved in large optical/infrared imaging surveys using either dedicated 2-m class telescopes or generous amounts of time on 4-m telescopes. These surveys are being carried out either by individual groups or in the form of public surveys, thereby serving a broader community and increasing the scientific yield of the accumulated data.

The need for imaging data is especially acute for the ESO community at large, considering the four telescopes of VLT and the large array of spectrographs, some lacking imaging capabilities. Foreseeing this need, ESO established in 1997 the ESO Imaging Survey (EIS) project with the primary purpose of conducting public imaging surveys in support of VLT science. Over the past three years EIS has carried out several surveys providing the ESO community with multi-passband optical data over relatively large areas to moderate depth, deep optical/infrared surveys of smaller fields as well as observations of a large number of selected stellar fields. Some of these programs cover sky regions being observed from the ground and space in other wavelengths (e.g. Chandra and HDF-S fields). Combined, they provide valuable multi-wavelength datasets from which statistical samples can be extracted and searches for rare population of objects can be conducted. In fact, the imaging surveys driven by 8-m class telescopes sample a region of parameter space significantly different from that accessible by shallower, all-sky optical/infrared surveys, thus offering new scientific opportunities for a broad range of areas.

In this paper the requirements for establishing a framework for conducting long term ground-based, optical/infrared public surveys and for designing a robust end-to-end survey pipeline are reviewed. The broad range of issues that impact the architecture of a survey system are identified in section 2. In section 3, the EIS project is briefly reviewed and used as a concrete example of an ongoing public survey. This experience has served to set more specific requirements on the EIS survey pipeline software presented in section 4. This system was specifically designed to meet the needs of long-term, multi-instrument public imaging surveys carried out by a small team. In this section some of the main features of the new EIS pipeline architecture are described as well as some other important components of the system and its current status. A more detailed discussion of some of the issues involved in the preparation of derived products is presented in section 5, followed by a brief summary in section 6.

## 2 Public Imaging Surveys

The need for imaging surveys is of course not new - what has dramatically changed in the past few years is the rapid increase in the rate digital images are being collected, and consequently the volume of data to be processed, and the time pressure to convert these data into input samples for follow-up observations. The challenge is now to build efficient systems to store, process, access, visualize, analyze and scientifically exploit the resulting large data sets. The basic reduction steps are well-known and include: removal of instrument signature; astrometric and photometric calibration; source detection and measurement of flux and structural parameters; and object classification (star/galaxy). Less standard steps include the combination of information obtained using different passbands and/or telescopes, stacking and mosaicing of images, preparation of color catalogs and use of multi-wavelength information for object classification.

Depending on the duration of the specific program it is desirable to consolidate these various steps into a pipeline enabling the efficient and un-supervised reduction of the data. The need for pipelined operations is particularly strong for long-term programs for which a greater degree of autonomy and a more complex data flow model are essential to ensure efficiency, uniformity and consistency in the production of deliverables. The pipeline requirements may vary considerably depending on the nature (public/private) and the size of the survey program. It is important to emphasize that not all pipelines are or need to be alike. In fact, the design of a survey pipeline depends on a variety of factors including: the specific goals of the survey and its strategy (number of passbands, area, depth, type of fields, dithering pattern, mosaic geometry); expected input data rate and total data volume; the number of telescope/detector configurations involved; the variety of derived products; and how frequently intermediate and final products should be made available. One must also consider the desired level of uniformity of the data in terms of photometric accuracy and seeing, which may vary depending on the specific scientific application. All of these points translate into requirements for the design of the survey software which must be able to store and administrate all this information and process the data according to their specifications. Of course, the larger the set of requirements is the more complex the pipeline needs to be, something not fully appreciated. It must be emphasized that the development of a survey system only pays dividends in the long-run.

To be successful a public survey depends not only on the design of the associated survey pipeline but also on the context in which it is inserted, as it must rely on the infrastructure available and the level of support granted to the program. A public survey must rely on a variety of interfaces and a balance must be reached between the specific responsibilities of the survey team and the institute at large. Some important points to consider are: whether the telescope used is a survey-dedicated or a general-purpose one; the nature of the telescope/survey team interface; the availability of tools to prepare and monitor observations; the availability of calibration data; how efficiently raw data can be accessed by the survey team as well as their overall uniformity.

Since the main goal of a public survey is to have data reach the interested users, one must also make sure that tools and resources are available to distribute final products and to provide some level of on-line service. The latter is particularly important since the present technology precludes the widespread distribution of pixel maps. In the short-term the next best alternative is to provide as many derived products as possible in the form of source catalogs, while allowing users to at least retrieve image sections to assess by themselves the quality of the delivered products for their scientific goals. This also provides the opportunity for independent verification of the data and a possible way to obtain an important feed-back from the users, leading to further improvements in the preparation of final products. Another mid-term alternative is to distribute the data to national/regional data centers which can then further distribute them to individual institutes and university research groups.

An additional complication for ground-based optical/infrared surveys is that they are, in contrast to surveys carried out from space, sensitive to weather and atmospheric conditions. This implies that the survey data have always to be supplemented with information regarding seeing and photometric quality. For this purpose, tools must be built to automatically monitor the progress of the survey not only in terms of its completeness but also of the quality of the data. More importantly, this has to be done quickly to enable the preparation of new observations, including repeat observations, and to prepare periodic updates to inform the general public of the status of the survey. In addition, when a dataset is released this information should be properly summarized in supporting publications to fully characterize the block of data being distributed. This is particularly problematic when releasing incomplete data sets, which may be the case when a pre-defined schedule of data releases is adopted.

Careful consideration of the several issues mentioned above are essential to establish the requirements for a survey pipeline software and the general framework within which a long-term, sustainable public survey can be carried out.

## 3 The EIS Project

The EIS project was established by ESO with the short-term goal of providing the ESO community different samples for the scientific verification of the first unit telescope of the VLT and its first year of operation. It was an attempt to coordinate and maximize the return of foreseen preparatory imaging programs at the NTT by consolidating them into a single survey and making the data immediately available to the ESO community. Besides this short-term goal, the EIS project was also viewed as an important first step to: establish a framework for conducting public surveys at ESO; drive the development of software to be consolidated into a survey system; create mechanisms to tap on the expertise spread throughout the ESO community; disseminate know-how by training students and post-docs and by making available survey software and tools; and create an environment for testing and bench-marking survey system software using real data.

From the organizational point of view, the first step was to appoint a Working Group assembled from scientists, representing a broad range of scientific interests, drawn from the community and in charge of: designing and supervising the progress of the surveys; preparing proposals and progress reports to the time allocation committee; proposing to the ESO management policies regarding data distribution and timetables; acting as representatives of the scientific interests of the ESO community at large. In parallel, a special Visitor Program was created to fund short- and long-term visits to ESO of known experts in the field as well as students and post-docs to form the Survey Team. The responsibilities of the team include: 1) preparation and execution of observations; 2) data reduction; 3) production and verification of calibrated images, object catalogs and targets; 4) maintenance of supporting database; 5) maintenance of web pages; 6) periodic reports describing the progress of the observations and papers accompanying each data release describing the data, the methodology adopted in the reduction and in the preparation of derived products. In the particular case of EIS, all these tasks have been carried out in parallel.

As pointed out above, EIS started as a short-term experimental project and in its early phase a pragmatic approach was adopted to develop a basic pipeline. The main effort was to assemble and interface existing software (e.g. IRAF, Drizzle, LDAC, SExtractor) to enable raw images to be processed and astrometrically calibrated, mosaics created and object catalogs produced under a minimum of supervision for the specific instrument and survey strategy adopted in the first survey. Due to time limitations much of the administrative tasks, photometric calibration, data verification and archiving remained external to the pipeline proper and required human intervention. This first implementation of the pipeline was effective for the input data rate and the total volume of survey data expected at the time. However, the pipeline could not match the requirements imposed by the rapidly evolving goals of the imaging survey, as can be seen in Figure 1 where the timeline of project is shown. This figure shows: at the top the dates and ESO’s observing periods; on the left side the various surveys conducted by EIS; and at the bottom the different detectors (telescopes) used. Also shown in the figure are the periods of observations of each survey and the dates of previous data releases. For reference, the science verification observations of VLT UT1 were carried out in December 1998, and included targets provided by EIS. The public nature of EIS requires a wide range of data products to be made publicly available periodically in the form of incremental and complete data releases . This is illustrated in Figure 2 which shows the web page from which EIS data products can be requested. This particular example corresponds to the complete data release of the EIS-WIDE survey. Given the large variety of products that are made available it is critical to have in place standard and automatic procedures to prepare these releases, to ensure the quality and consistency of the products. These requirements have a strong bearing on the scope of the EIS survey system and on its design.

From Figure 1 one can see that over the past three years six different surveys have been conducted (more information on the EIS project can be found at the URL www.eso.org/science/eis):

1. EIS-Wide: a moderately deep, wide-angle survey conducted at the NTT. The survey covers 17 square degree in $`I`$-band as well as smaller areas in $`B`$ and $`V`$.
2. EIS-DEEP: a multi-passband optical/infrared deep survey of the HDF-S and Chandra (AXAF) fields.
3. Pilot Survey: a $`BV`$ wide-angle survey covering over 14 square degrees, conducted with the wide-field imager (WFI) mounted on MPG/ESO telescope, to complement the $`I`$-band survey.
4. Deep Optical Survey: a deep $`UBVRI`$ optical survey intended to cover three, one square degree strips (four WFI pointings) over a range of right ascensions. Even though it can be considered as an extension of EIS-DEEP it is based on observations being carried out with WFI.
5. Deep Infrared Survey: designed to cover two areas of 450 square arcmin in two patches also observed in the optical.
6. Pre-flames: a multi-passband, relatively shallow survey, of selected stellar fields to be used for observations with the FLAMES/Giraffe combination.

In summary, the various EIS surveys were designed to provide datasets for a wide range of science: multi-passband data over a relatively wide-area to moderate depth to search for rare objects (e.g. high-redshift clusters, quasars), deep surveys for the selection of statistical samples of galaxies for high-redshift studies (e.g. LBG) and imaging data with accurate astrometry ($`<0.2`$ arcsec) for multi-object spectroscopy using the high-resolution Giraffe spectrograph, lacking imaging capabilities. The selected pointings have also been obvious choices. The wide-angle surveys consisted of four distinct patches covering a wide range of right ascensions, to provide targets almost year-round, in a declination range suitable for VLT observations. Two of the selected regions are located at high-galactic latitudes: one near the South Galactic Pole, of interest for studies of quasars and absorption systems, and the other overlapping with ESO Slice Project redshift survey and the associated deep ATESP radio survey . The other two regions surveyed by EIS-WIDE were selected at lower galactic latitudes to provide data of potential interest for galactic studies. Three of the selected regions have also been covered by radio surveys such as ATESP, NVSS and WISH. The deep surveys have included regions where considerable work is under way in other wavelengths such as HDF-S and Chandra.

While from the scientific point of view the EIS strategy has been quite sensible, from the technical point of view it has been very demanding as they have involved observations using different telescope/detector combinations (EMMI, SUSI2, SOFI at the NTT and WFI at the 2.2m MPG/ESO telescope), a variety of filters, different surveying strategies, and fields at high- and low-galactic latitudes, representing different challenges for the astrometric calibration. To complicate matters even further EIS observations were conducted in visitor mode and started right after the commissioning of these instruments, before their operation had matured.

The short-comings of the first EIS pipeline implementation became evident when: different telescope/detectors were used (e.g. infrared; CCD mosaics); the data volume greatly increased due to the use of a $`8K\times 8K`$ wide-field imager; and the status of the program changed from a short-term experimental program to a long-term one. Using different telescope/detector combinations and survey strategies entailed the need to handle: optical and infrared data, requiring different reduction strategies; detectors with different characteristics; different types of images and headers; and different combination of optics, CCDs and filters. The large data volume required the installation of DLT juke-boxes and hence the need for the dynamical administration of the machine resources and for procedures to efficiently store/retrieve data. Finally, the long-term status of the program combined with the large turnover of visitors (over 25 in three years, averaging 5-6/year) demonstrated the necessity of simplifying operations, eliminating as much as possible the need for human intervention. Clearly, the operational requirements and the timetable of the program forced the development of a more sophisticated survey system in order to make the EIS effort sustainable in the long-term.

## 4 EIS Survey System Design

### 4.1 Basic Requirements

Over the past year the EIS team has concentrated its efforts on designing and implementing a new survey system matched to the requirements discussed above and building on the hands-on experience accumulated from the previous surveys . The main goal has been to achieve a stable and reliable operation by building a close-loop system providing the tools required for preparing, monitoring and reporting the progress of the observations, reducing data, preparing and verifying survey products and releasing them following standard procedures to ensure efficiency, consistency and quality of the data. A top requirement has been to make the survey system capable of handling data from different telescope/detector configurations, as required by EIS, and of administrating the system resources automatically.

In addition, the desire to make the system more widely accessible also required the survey software to: 1) support different users (e.g. survey/guest); 2) support multi-users and multi-sessions; 3) allow the user to customize the processing steps and the configuration files associated to these processes; 4) hide from the user details of where the data are stored in the system and how they are retrieved; 5) allow for the installation of the pipeline in other locations; 6) allow for the easy installation of user-developed algorithms.

In response to this challenge a new fully integrated, end-to-end, user-friendly pipeline has been designed to make it possible for a small team to conduct public surveys on a routine basis satisfying the wide range of requirements outlined above. While the public surveys conducted by ESO have so far been relatively modest in size, with VST and VISTA the trend is for the flow of data to increase significantly. Therefore, the implementation of a more comprehensive survey system is essential not only to deal with the present surveys but also a key element in the long-term plan to ramp-up the system to cope and fully exploit these new facilities.

### 4.2 EIS Graphic Interface

Taking all the requirements mentioned above into consideration a graphic user interface was created, consolidating under it all the functionalities of the pipeline software, making them easily accessible and their operation simple. To that end all the EIS pipeline processes have been wrapped by Python scripts which are launched through this multi-layered graphic interface. Though still under development a preview of the functionalities of the pipeline is presented below and illustrated by a development version of the graphic interface.

Basically, the pipeline, represented by different sets of panels, consists of three layers reflecting the level of complexity of the processes available. At the top level there are master-processes that work as black-boxes, wrapping together all the steps involved in the production of a given final product. These processes are started by pressing one of the buttons displayed on the left side of the window shown in Figure 3, the first to appear after a new pipeline session is started. This opens a new window from which these high-level operations are controlled. The main processes shown in the panel of Figure 3 drive: the reduction of raw images all the way to the production and verification of single passband catalogs on a run basis; the preparation of final images by stacking or mosaicing pre-reduced images on a survey/passband basis; the production of either single passband or color catalogs from pre-reduced images; and the identification and classification of objects from the analysis of multi-color catalogs. Under normal circumstances most survey operations are executed from this layer of the pipeline.

As an example, Figure 4 shows the control panel for catalog production. This panel provides the environment for the preparation of single or multiple catalogs of different types. It enables the user to configure the processing steps, the configuration parameters for each process and to select the appropriate input data (images or catalogs). The choices include the production of single passband catalogs, catalogs extracted from an image mosaic, color catalogs from available single passband catalogs or images, and photometric redshift catalogs created from color catalogs. This panel is used after final image products have been produced.

Once the end-product type is selected the bottom-half of the panel is displayed with a layout that depends on the selection made, and the appropriate links to a so-called data access layer (Figure 5) and to a configuration panel (Figure 6) are set. The data access layer enables the retrieval of input files from default, user-specified directories or via the search engine, which are set for the appropriate type of input data (catalogs or images). The retrieved data are then displayed in the list box on the left of the panel, while the one to the right lists intermediate and final products. The process can be executed in its entirety or by selecting the steps listed on the right side of the panel, right below the console (see section 5). The steps to be executed, the parameters for the different processes and where the results should be stored can all be set by using the catalog production configuration window. A console is also available for monitoring in real-time the progress of the execution. Process logs, error reports and diagnostic plots are also created and can be viewed either interactively or at a later time. While the design of these graphic interfaces is not final, this example serves to illustrate the underlying philosophy being adopted throughout the pipeline. It also underscores some general features of the pipeline among which are the freedom it gives the user to configure processes and parameters, the ability of running un-supervised or interactively and to inspect the results of a process during or after its execution.

The second layer of the pipeline allows the user to execute step by step the various processes wrapped together in the first-layer. This layer is useful for development, testing, training and for setting up suitable default configuration files. It is also used for the administration of the pipeline and survey. The main panel is divided into three major sections: administration, image analysis and catalogs & targets which can be accessed individually, using the appropriate buttons on the right of Figure 3 or all at once as shown in Figure 7. This figure gives a global view of the functionalities available in the EIS pipeline. Altogether this panel integrates over 200 processes ranging in functionality and complexity.

The top set of sub-panels are used for the administration of the pipeline and its database (the three sub-panels on the left) and surveys (three sub-panels on the right). The administration of the survey system requires information about users, incoming tapes, software packages used and their versions, definition of environment variables, logical devices and paths, and default settings for the pipeline. This information is stored in the database via graphic interfaces to forms that guide the user for the required information. Also available is a set of graphic interfaces to the database which is used for development and maintenance. The main survey database currently consists of over 100 tables. A replica of these tables are also available for guest users. Finally, disk space, juke-boxes, processing status of all the EIS machines, logs and error reports can be monitored and examined directly from the panels.

The three sub-panels on the right are used to administrate long-term surveys. These sub-panels are used to store in the database information regarding the instrumental setup (telescope, detectors, filters) used in a particular survey and their physical characteristics which are used consistently throughout the pipeline. They are also used to store information about the regions of sky to be observed, the pointings and the sequence of exposures required by the adopted survey strategy. In addition, observing logs are ingested and night/run summaries and reports are prepared even before the data are processed. This information is then stored in the database and used by the system to request data from the archive and to select runs to be reduced. It is also used to monitor the progress of the survey and to prepare new observations based on the results of previous ones. Finally, the procedure to prepare a data release is also foreseen to be consolidated in this panel. The steps include the selection of data to be released, final verification of the products, backup of the particular set of data being released, update of the database with information about the release, transfer of the data to the ESO archive and the update of data request page on the web. The main goal has been to establish standard procedures for all the tasks of the survey team, hence facilitating their execution.

The middle panel provides access to the different stages of the image analysis pipeline assembled together in the top layer described above. The various sub-panels represent different possible breakpoints of the process, which also correspond to places where data in different stages can enter the pipeline. This is useful when re-processing of the data is required. This feature has been extensively used in the development and test phase. From each sub-panel the specific type of input data can be retrieved through the data access layer described earlier. Although this layer of the pipeline is not expected to be used in routine survey operations, it is very useful for diagnostics, debugging and bench-marking.

The bottom panel handles the preparation of derived products including catalog production, target identification and their verification as well as other analysis algorithms and preparation of simulated data. A variety of tools are also available to manipulate, visualize and compare catalogs, correlate objects with information available in other databases, compute transformations to other photometric systems, compute extinction corrections, and compare derived results with model predictions and empirical data.

Finally, at the lowest level, not shown here, tools to handle images and catalogs in a variety of ways are available individually. These tools can be found in the sub-panels image and catalog handling as well as in their respective “toolboxes”. These toolkits are a collection of specific software developed over the years to manipulate pixel maps and catalogs and include the most basic tasks used to build more complex routines. Their inclusion into the panels is important for debugging and testing new versions, before making upgrades.

### 4.3 Other Developments and Current Status

Since a survey system comprises innumerous components the pipeline software development involved the participation of a large number of people with different backgrounds and expertises to develop the variety of algorithms required and to address the vast range of technical issues involved. Besides the overall framework presented above other critical areas which required considerable effort have included: 1) a control system to administrate the flow of the data through the pipeline and the system resources, to ingest information into the database and to handle the DLT juke-boxes; 2) a comprehensive graphic interface to Sybase, the commercial database being used by the pipeline; 3) the implementation of a search engine, supporting different combinations of queries; 4) an interactive graphic facility created by interfacing Python and IDL; 5) a graphic user interface for the administration of the observed standard stars, the photometric calibration of the nights and storage of this information; 6) a new strategy for reducing optical/infrared images, coadding and astrometrically calibrating them; and 7) algorithms and tools to verify the data products (see next section).

Other features of the survey system are worth mentioning. First, when a new session of the pipeline is started, temporary directories associated to each sub-panel are created and assigned to a session/user. However, in order to preserve the available disk space, these directories are automatically removed at the end of the session. Therefore, the results stored on the directories must be explicitly saved on permanent directories, tape and database. Second, all configuration files are identified by a session/user/process/instrument attribute thus allowing each user to have its own set of customized configuration files. Third, all processes have a common data access layer which can retrieve/store data from tape/disk and access different databases depending on the privileges of the user. This ensures the integrity of the survey data at all times. Finally, the open nature of the system enables the system to evolve, making it easy to integrate new tools developed either by the survey team or by other users.

In summary, the framework provided by the graphic user interface represents the consolidation of the experience accumulated over the past few years. the integration of all functions of the survey system into a single environment and the standardization of the procedures involved in the execution, reduction, verification and release of data from a public imaging survey. Currently, the challenge is to integrate and interface the various pieces of software described above into the overall pipeline framework. While nearly all the tools have already been developed and tested their integration into the pipeline is still in progress.

## 5 EIS Products

Given the nature of the EIS project and the fact that current technology makes the widespread distribution of pixel maps very difficult, EIS was charged to prepare source catalogs and to select astronomical objects of potential interest for VLT observations ,. In order to do that in a well-defined and consistent way, standard procedures and tools have been developed to prepare and to verify: single passband catalogs; catalogs extracted from large area mosaics; color catalogs, produced either by association of single passband catalogs or by using a reference image ; and photometric redshift catalogs. These procedures have been extensively tested and potential problems identified based on the vast experience gained in processing large amounts of data.

Even in the simplest case of single passband catalogs the procedures developed extend well beyond the simple extraction of sources and measurement of flux and structural parameters. The catalog production includes the standard removal of sources flagged by SExtractor, trimming of the catalog according to the weight map of its associated image, extinction correction, conversion of instrumental magnitudes into a standard system consistent with the filter used in the observations, automatic masking of regions surrounding bright stars, and proper consideration of noise properties of the image. The same is true for color catalog production where proper monitoring of multiple associations and the accuracy of the relative astrometry are monitored, depending on the method chosen for its production (association- or $`\chi ^2`$-method). It is also possible to select the data for a given passband to serve as the astrometric reference and redo the astrometric calibration on-the-fly to further ensure a good relative astrometric solution. Catalogs with photometric redshifts have also proven to be a valuable tool to identify potential problems with multi-color data and are produced whenever possible.

In order to validate the derived catalogs a suite of algorithms and visualization tools have been developed to examine the catalogs produced by the pipeline. These tools include: projected distribution, galaxy and stellar counts, counts-in-cells, angular correlation function, PSF analysis, color distribution, color-magnitude diagrams, color-color diagrams, and photometric redshift distribution. Tools are also available for comparison with other empirical data and/or with model predictions. To ensure consistency a library of stellar, galaxy and quasar spectra is available which allows the stellar and evolutionary tracks to be computed based on information available in the database regarding the setup used for obtaining the particular combination of data being verified.

Tools are also available to search for subsets of objects of potential interest using selection criteria adopted by other authors or defined on-line using tools available in the pipeline which allow to define particular regions of interest, as illustrated in Figure 8. The selected regions can then be stored in the database and applied to the appropriate color catalogs to locate and produce a list of low-mass stars, white-dwarfs and high-redshift objects candidates as well as outliers in the color-color diagram. Figure 9 shows the final result of this analysis for faint sources within a region of 4 square degrees covered by EIS-WIDE and the Pilot Survey in $`BVI`$. Besides the expected cloud of points corresponding to the locus of low-redshift galaxies of different morphological types, one finds potentially interesting populations in different parts of the diagram. Note the large number of high-redshift objects with estimated $`z>4.5`$. Comparing the number of identifications with those predicted by models one may roughly assess the consistency of the catalog. Furthermore, by examining the location of outliers in the color image it may be possible to identify either objects of real scientific interest or possible problems in the production of the catalog. These selected objects can be stored in the database and visually inspected using the tool shown Figure 10, which allows the user to display the data in different ways such as: cutouts extracted from the images available in each passband; a composite of postage stamps from all the available images; a color composite image marking a specific (Figure 11) or a set of objects of a given type. The panel shown in Figure 10 also allows comments to be appended and to flag dubious objects. This information can also be stored in the database and can be used to eliminate objects in the preparation of final lists of candidates. By examining the objects in their image context it is possible to detect gross errors in the preparation of the color catalogs as well as cases where the colors of the object are likely to be affected by nearby objects.

## 6 Summary

By now the need for public surveys is generally recognized both as a scientific tool in its own right and as the means to produce a database of astronomical targets for the increasing number of large-aperture telescopes already in operation. Perhaps what is not yet fully appreciated is the magnitude of the effort required to produce an end-to-end survey system satisfying all the requirements for a stable and reliable operation of high-throughput running un-supervised for long stretches of time and making the data and information available to the community in a timely manner. Building a proper framework for carrying out such programs is essential to meet the expectations of the community and win their continuing support. The survey system presented here provides a solid basis from which one can ramp-up to handle the significantly larger data rates expected from future imaging surveys using larger CCD mosaics. On the short-term it represents a major step towards the ultimate goal of making the ongoing public surveys at ESO a routine operation, producing a steady stream of images and derived products that can be used to prepare statistical samples for VLT programs. Furthermore, in order to validate these products tools have been developed to handle, visualize and analyze multi-color data, to compare results with models or other empirical data and to correlate the derived catalogs with other databases. These tools are a modest first step towards the implementation of a more comprehensive archival research environment, along the lines envisioned by the ongoing effort to build virtual observatories, as required for the full scientific exploitation of the data from ongoing and future public surveys.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all the people involved in the EIS project, in particular those in the present team that have made significant contributions to the software development: S. Arnouts, C. Benoist, C. Rite, M. Schirmer, R. Slijkhuis and B. Vandame. Special thanks to E. Deul, R. Hook, R. Rengelink and A. Wicenec for their contributions over the years.

## Index