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Letter

Nature Physics 4, 116–119 (1 February 2008) | doi:10.1038/nphys810

Charge fractionalization in quantum wires

Hadar Steinberg , Gilad Barak , Amir Yacoby , Loren N. Pfeiffer , Ken W. West , Bertrand I. Halperin & Karyn Le Hur

Although the unit of charge in nature is a fundamental constant, the charge of individual quasiparticles in some low-dimensional systems may be fractionalized. Quantum one-dimensional (1D) systems, for instance, are theoretically predicted to carry charge in units smaller than the electron charge e.