The 1982 signal appeared inside one Landau level
Tsui, Störmer and Gossard observed a fractional Hall plateau and a longitudinal resistance minimum in a high-mobility gallium-arsenide heterostructure in 1982. The lowest spin-polarized Landau level was only partly occupied.
The original report considered possible ordered states. Laughlin’s 1983 correlated wavefunction supplied a different, influential liquid interpretation, illustrating how observation and explanation developed in sequence.
Interactions create a new collective state
Within a partly filled Landau level, kinetic energy is highly constrained and electron interactions become decisive. Laughlin’s trial state suppresses close approaches and describes an incompressible correlated liquid at selected fractions. It cannot be smoothly replaced by independent electrons filling ordinary bands.
Sources: [2]
Fractional charge belongs to excitations
The many-body theory predicts localized excitations carrying a fraction of the electron charge. A fractional conductance alone does not measure that charge directly. Later charge-sensitive experiments such as shot-noise measurements provided separate evidence, with their own transport assumptions.
The 1998 contribution keeps its many-body content
The 1998 award recognized the discovery of a new quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations. Existing integer-band Labs are linked for comparison only. They contain no correlated fractional liquid, so their edge states cannot be relabeled as fractional quasiparticles.