  The fractional quantum Hall effect has inspired searches for exotic emergent
topological particles, such as fractionally charged excitations, composite
fermions, abelian and nonabelian anyons and Majorana fermions. Fractionally
charged skyrmions, which support both topological charge and topological
vortex-like spin structure, have also been predicted to occur in the vicinity
of 1/3 filling of the lowest Landau level. The fractional skyrmions, however,
are anticipated to be exceedingly fragile, suppressed by very small Zeeman
energies. Here we show that, slightly away from 1/3 filling, the smallest
manifestations of the fractional skyrmion exist in the excitation spectrum for
a broad range of Zeeman energies, and appear in resonant inelastic light
scattering experiments as well-defined resonances slightly below the long
wavelength spin wave mode. The spectroscopy of these exotic bound states serves
as a sensitive tool for investigating the residual interaction between
composite fermions, responsible for delicate new fractional quantum Hall states
in this filling factor region.
