7,236 research outputs found

    Toward a Conformal Field Theory for the Quantum Hall Effect

    Full text link
    An effective Hamiltonian for the study of the quantum Hall effect is proposed. This Hamiltonian, which includes a ``current-current" interaction has the form of a Hamiltonian for a conformal field theory in the large NN limit. An order parameter is constructed from which the Hamiltonian may be derived. This order parameter may be viewed as either a collective coordinate for a system of NN charged particles in a strong magnetic field; or as a field of spins associated with the cyclotron motion of these particles.Comment: 14 pg

    The Quantum Hall Effect: Unified Scaling Theory and Quasi-particles at the Edge

    Full text link
    We address two fundamental issues in the physics of the quantum Hall effect: a unified description of scaling behavior of conductances in the integral and fractional regimes, and a quasi-particle formulation of the chiral Luttinger Liquids that describe the dynamics of edge excitations in the fractional regime.Comment: 11 pages, LateX, 2 figures (not included, available from the authors), to be published in Proceedings of the International Summer School on Strongly Correlated Electron Systems, Lajos Kossuth University, Debrecen, Hungary, Sept 199

    Holographic fermions in external magnetic fields

    Get PDF
    We study the Fermi level structure of 2+1-dimensional strongly interacting electron systems in external magnetic field using the AdS/CFT correspondence. The gravity dual of a finite density fermion system is a Dirac field in the background of the dyonic AdS-Reissner-Nordstrom black hole. In the probe limit the magnetic system can be reduced to the non-magnetic one, with Landau-quantized momenta and rescaled thermodynamical variables. We find that at strong enough magnetic fields, the Fermi surface vanishes and the quasiparticle is lost either through a crossover to conformal regime or through a phase transition to an unstable Fermi surface. In the latter case, the vanishing Fermi velocity at the critical magnetic field triggers the non-Fermi liquid regime with unstable quasiparticles and a change in transport properties of the system. We associate it with a metal-"strange metal" phase transition. Next we compute the DC Hall and longitudinal conductivities using the gravity-dressed fermion propagators. For dual fermions with a large charge, many different Fermi surfaces contribute and the Hall conductivity is quantized as expected for integer Quantum Hall Effect (QHE). At strong magnetic fields, as additional Fermi surfaces open up, new plateaus typical for the fractional QHE appear. The somewhat irregular pattern in the length of fractional QHE plateaus resemble the outcomes of experiments on thin graphite in a strong magnetic field. Finally, motivated by the absence of the sign problem in holography, we suggest a lattice approach to the AdS calculations of finite density systems.Comment: 34 pages, 14 figure

    Strong Coupling Fixed Points of Current Interactions and Disordered Fermions in 2D

    Full text link
    The all-orders beta function is used to study disordered Dirac fermions in 2D. The generic strong coupling fixed `points' of anisotropic current-current interactions at large distances are actually isotropic manifolds corresponding to subalgebras of the maximal current algebra at short distances. The IR theories are argued to be current algebra cosets. We illustrate this with the simple example of anisotropic su(2), which is the physics of Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions. We work out the phase diagram for the Chalker-Coddington network model which is in the universality class of the integer Quantum Hall transition. One massless phase is in the universality class of dense polymers.Comment: published version (Phys. Rev. B

    Physical principles underlying the quantum Hall effect

    Get PDF
    In this contribution, we present an introduction to the physical principles underlying the quantum Hall effect. The field theoretic approach to the integral and fractional effect is sketched, with some emphasis on the mechanism of electromagnetic gauge anomaly cancellation by chiral degrees of freedom living on the edge of the sample. Applications of this formalism to the design and theoretical interpretation of interference experiments are outlined.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures; small corrections, replaced with published versio

    Horava-Lifshitz Gravity and Effective Theory of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect

    Get PDF
    We show that Horava-Lifshitz gravity theory can be employed as a covariant framework to build an effective field theory for the fractional quantum Hall effect that respects all the spacetime symmetries such as non-relativistic diffeomorphism invariance and anisotropic Weyl invariance as well as the gauge symmetry. The key to this formalism is a set of correspondence relations that maps all the field degrees of freedom in the Horava-Lifshitz gravity theory to external background (source) fields among others in the effective action of the quantum Hall effect, according to their symmetry transformation properties. We originally derive the map as a holographic dictionary, but its form is independent of the existence of holographic duality. This paves the way for the application of Horava-Lifshitz holography on fractional quantum Hall effect. Using the simplest holographic Chern-Simons model, we compute the low energy effective action at leading orders and show that it captures universal electromagnetic and geometric properties of quantum Hall states, including the Wen-Zee shift, Hall viscosity, angular momentum density and their relations. We identify the shift function in Horava-Lifshitz gravity theory as minus of guiding center velocity and conjugate to guiding center momentum. This enables us to distinguish guiding center angular momentum density from the internal one, which is the sum of Landau orbit spin and intrinsic (topological) spin of the composite particles. Our effective action shows that Hall viscosity is minus half of the internal angular momentum density and proportional to Wen-Zee shift, and Hall bulk viscosity is half of the guiding center angular momentum density.Comment: 69 page

    Condensate induced transitions between topologically ordered phases

    Get PDF
    We investigate transitions between topologically ordered phases in two spatial dimensions induced by the condensation of a bosonic quasiparticle. To this end, we formulate an extension of the theory of symmetry breaking phase transitions which applies to phases with topological excitations described by quantum groups or modular tensor categories. This enables us to deal with phases whose quasiparticles have non-integer quantum dimensions and obey braid statistics. Many examples of such phases can be constructed from two-dimensional rational conformal field theories and we find that there is a beautiful connection between quantum group symmetry breaking and certain well-known constructions in conformal field theory, notably the coset construction, the construction of orbifold models and more general conformal extensions. Besides the general framework, many representative examples are worked out in detail.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figures, RevTe

    A twisted conformal field theory description of dissipative quantum mechanics

    Full text link
    We show how the recently proposed CFT for a bilayer Quantum Hall system at filling nu=m/pm+2, the Twisted Model (TM), is equivalent to the system of two massless scalar bosons with a magnetic boundary interaction as introduced in Nucl. Phys. B443 (1995) 444, at the so called magic points. We are then able to describe, within such a framework, the dissipative quantum mechanics of a particle confined to a plane and subject to an external magnetic field normal to it. Such an analogy is further developed in terms of the TM boundary states, by describing the interaction between an impurity with a Hall system.Comment: 13 pages, no figures, Late
    corecore