Quantum bubble defects in the lowest-Landau-level crystal

A longstanding puzzle for the lowest-Landau-level crystal phase has been an order of magnitude discrepancy between the theoretically calculated energy of the defects and the measured activation gap. We perform an extensive study of various kinds of defects in the correlated composite fermion crystal and find that the lowest energy defect is a sixfold symmetric "hypercorrelated bubble interstitial," in which an interstitial particle forms a strongly correlated bound state with a particle of the crystal. The energy of the bubble defect is a factor of ∼3 smaller than that of the lowest energy defect in a Hartree-Fock crystal. The anomalously low activation energies measured in transport experiments are thus a signature of the unusual quantum nature of the crystal and its defects.