Quantum Hall Effect in a Rotating Bose-Einstein Condensate: An Atomic Twin of the Electronic Brother?

We exploit the analogy with the quantum Hall (QH) effect for electrons to study the possible atomic QH states of a rapidly-rotating Bose-Einstein condensate. Actually, there is a nearly perfect map of the present problem in the QH regime to the QH physics for electrons. The profound map enables one to give a physically appealing definitions of the filling fraction and the "atomic Hall conductance" that is quantized for atomic Laughlin states. This quantization might imply an exotic fractionalization of atomic mass. We also briefly discuss an effective Chern-Simons theory for describing the atomic QH liquids where a gravitational-like field naturally emerges.