Daniel Tsui, Horst Störmer and Arthur Gossard reported the effect in 1982. They grew gallium arsenide–aluminium gallium arsenide layers by molecular beam epitaxy, separating the two-dimensional electron gas from its semiconductor doping. They cut Hall bars and made indium contacts. Low-field measurements established number density and charge carrier mobility. A perpendicular magnetic field sweep measured transverse and longitudinal sheet resistivities at several temperatures. Cooling sharpened the plateau near and the longitudinal minimum at filling factor ; integer plateaus provided an internal comparison. The longitudinal minimum remained finite at the lowest temperature: zero-temperature vanishing was unresolved. This established anomalous transport, without directly measuring excitation electric charge.[ref]
Figure 1.
Separate transverse and longitudinal readouts of a fractional quantum Hall effect experiment
. Original functional Hall bar schematic, with chosen contact labels and no historical dimensions. The inset separates the two-dimensional electron gas from semiconductor doping; the two meters distinguish transverse electrical resistance from longitudinal dissipation. No trace or measured value is reconstructed. Details.
The two readouts test different statements. A single intersection with would also occur on the smooth classical relation at . A quantum Hall plateau instead persists over a magnetic field interval. Comparing transverse and longitudinal signals helps distinguish that plateau from a contact-placement artefact; the quantum Hall conductivity tensor inversion quantifies the contamination when longitudinal sheet resistivity is nonzero.
Later, 1997 shot noise measurements associated with quantum tunnelling at filling factor tested the excitation electric charge separately, finding . That is a different observable from a Hall plateau.[ref]