In condensed matter physics, the Laughlin wavefunction is an ansatz, proposed by Robert Laughlin for the ground state of a two-dimensional electron gas placed in a uniform background magnetic field in the presence of a uniform jellium background when the filling factor of the lowest Landau level is ν ν = 1 / n where n is an odd positive integer. It was constructed to explain the observation of the ν ν = 1 / 3 fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE), and predicted the existence of additional ν ν = 1 / n states as well as quasiparticle excitations with fractional electric charge e / n , both of which were later experimentally observed. Laughlin received one third of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1998 for this discovery.