Anisotropic Transport of Quantum Hall Meron-Pair Excitations

Double-layer quantum Hall systems at total filling factor $\nu_T=1$ can exhibit a commensurate-incommensurate phase transition driven by a magnetic field $B_{\parallel}$ oriented parallel to the layers. Within the commensurate phase, the lowest charge excitations are believed to be linearly-confined Meron pairs, which are energetically favored to align with $B_{\parallel}$. In order to investigate this interesting object, we propose a gated double-layer Hall bar experiment in which $B_{\parallel}$ can be rotated with respect to the direction of a constriction. We demonstrate the strong angle-dependent transport due to the anisotropic nature of linearly-confined Meron pairs and discuss how it would be manifested in experiment.Comment: 4 pages, RevTex, 3 postscript figure

How universal is the fractional-quantum-Hall edge Luttinger liquid?

This article reports on our microscopic investigations of the edge of the fractional quantum Hall state at filling factor $\nu=1/3$. We show that the interaction dependence of the wave function is well described in an approximation that includes mixing with higher composite-fermion Landau levels in the lowest order. We then proceed to calculate the equal time edge Green function, which provides evidence that the Luttinger exponent characterizing the decay of the Green function at long distances is interaction dependent. The relevance of this result to tunneling experiments is discussed.Comment: 5 page

Interlayer Exchange Interactions, SU(4) Soft Waves and Skyrmions in Bilayer Quantum Hall Ferromagnets

The Coulomb exchange interaction is the driving force for quantum coherence in quantum Hall systems. We construct a microscopic Landau-site Hamiltonian for the exchange interaction in bilayer quantum Hall ferromagnets, which is characterized by the SU(4) isospin structure. By taking a continuous limit, the Hamiltonian gives rise to the SU(4) nonlinear sigma model in the von-Neumann-lattice formulation. The ground-state energy is evaluated at filling factors $\nu =1,2,3,4$. It is shown at $\nu =1$ that there are 3 independent soft waves, where only one soft wave is responsible for the coherent tunneling of electrons between the two layers. It is also shown at $\nu =1$ that there are 3 independent skyrmion states apart from the translational degree of freedom. They are CP$^{3}$ skyrmions enjoying the spin-charge entanglement confined within the \LLL.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Quantum Transport in Two-Channel Fractional Quantum Hall Edges

We study the effect of backward scatterings in the tunneling at a point contact between the edges of a second level hierarchical fractional quantum Hall states. A universal scaling dimension of the tunneling conductance is obtained only when both of the edge channels propagate in the same direction. It is shown that the quasiparticle tunneling picture and the electron tunneling picture give different scaling behaviors of the conductances, which indicates the existence of a crossover between the two pictures. When the direction of two edge-channels are opposite, e.g. in the case of MacDonald's edge construction for the $\nu=2/3$ state, the phase diagram is divided into two domains giving different temperature dependence of the conductance.Comment: 21 pages (REVTeX and 1 Postscript figure

Skyrmions in the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect

It is verified that, at small Zeeman energies, the charged excitations in the vicinity of 1/3 filled Landau level are skyrmions of composite fermions, analogous to the skyrmions of electrons near filling factor unity. These are found to be relevant, however, only at very low magnetic fields.Comment: 13 pages including 2 postscript figures; accepted for publication in Solid State Communications (1996

Edge and Bulk of the Fractional Quantum Hall Liquids

An effective Chern-Simons theory for the Abelian quantum Hall states with edges is proposed to study the edge and bulk properties in a unified fashion. We impose a condition that the currents do not flow outside the sample. With this boundary condition, the action remains gauge invariant and the edge modes are naturally derived. We find that the integer coupling matrix $K$ should satisfy the condition $\sum_I(K^{-1})_{IJ} = \nu/m$ ($\nu$: filling of Landau levels, $m$: the number of gauge fields ) for the quantum Hall liquids. Then the Hall conductance is always quantized irrespective of the detailed dynamics or the randomness at the edge.Comment: 13 pages, REVTEX, one figure appended as a postscript fil

Current and charge distributions of the fractional quantum Hall liquids with edges

An effective Chern-Simons theory for the quantum Hall states with edges is studied by treating the edge and bulk properties in a unified fashion. An exact steady-state solution is obtained for a half-plane geometry using the Wiener-Hopf method. For a Hall bar with finite width, it is proved that the charge and current distributions do not have a diverging singularity. It is shown that there exists only a single mode even for the hierarchical states, and the mode is not localized exponentially near the edges. Thus this result differs from the edge picture in which electrons are treated as strictly one dimensional chiral Luttinger liquids.Comment: 21 pages, REV TeX fil

Actin Cytoskeleton and Golgi Involvement in Barley stripe mosaic virus Movement and Cell Wall Localization of Triple Gene Block Proteins

Barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV) induces massive actin filament thickening at the infection front of infected Nicotiana benthamiana leaves. To determine the mechanisms leading to actin remodeling, fluorescent protein fusions of the BSMV triple gene block (TGB) proteins were coexpressed in cells with the actin marker DsRed: Talin. TGB ectopic expression experiments revealed that TGB3 is a major elicitor of filament thickening, that TGB2 resulted in formation of intermediate DsRed:Talin filaments, and that TGB1 alone had no obvious effects on actin filament structure. Latrunculin B (LatB) treatments retarded BSMV cell-to-cell movement, disrupted actin filament organization, and dramatically decreased the proportion of paired TGB3 foci appearing at the cell wall (CW). BSMV infection of transgenic plants tagged with GFP-KDEL exhibited membrane proliferation and vesicle formation that were especially evident around the nucleus. Similar membrane proliferation occurred in plants expressing TGB2 and/or TGB3, and DsRed: Talin fluorescence in these plants colocalized with the ER vesicles. TGB3 also associated with the Golgi apparatus and overlapped with cortical vesicles appearing at the cell periphery. Brefeldin A treatments disrupted Golgi and also altered vesicles at the CW, but failed to interfere with TGB CW localization. Our results indicate that actin cytoskeleton interactions are important in BSMV cell-to-cell movement and for CW localization of TGB3

Quantum railroads and directed localization at the juncture of quantum Hall systems

The integer quantum Hall effect (QHE) and one-dimensional Anderson localization (AL) are limiting special cases of a more general phenomenon, directed localization (DL), predicted to occur in disordered one-dimensional wave guides called "quantum railroads" (QRR). Here we explain the surprising results of recent measurements by Kang et al. [Nature 403, 59 (2000)] of electron transfer between edges of two-dimensional electron systems and identify experimental evidence of QRR's in the general, but until now entirely theoretical, DL regime that unifies the QHE and AL. We propose direct experimental tests of our theory.Comment: 11 pages revtex + 3 jpeg figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Impurity scattering and transport of fractional Quantum Hall edge state

We study the effects of impurity scattering on the low energy edge state dynamic s for a broad class of quantum Hall fluids at filling factor $\nu =n/(np+1)$, for integer $n$ and even integer $p$. When $p$ is positive all $n$ of the edge modes are expected to move in the same direction, whereas for negative $p$ one mode moves in a direction opposite to the other $n-1$ modes. Using a chiral-Luttinger model to describe the edge channels, we show that for an ideal edge when $p$ is negative, a non-quantized and non-universal Hall conductance is predicted. The non-quantized conductance is associated with an absence of equilibration between the $n$ edge channels. To explain the robust experimental Hall quantization, it is thus necessary to incorporate impurity scattering into the model, to allow for edge equilibration. A perturbative analysis reveals that edge impurity scattering is relevant and will modify the low energy edge dynamics. We describe a non-perturbative solution for the random $n-$channel edge, which reveals the existence of a new disorder-dominated phase, characterized by a stable zero temperature renormalization group fixed point. The phase consists of a single propagating charge mode, which gives a quantized Hall conductance, and $n-1$ neutral modes. The neutral modes all propagate at the same speed, and manifest an exact SU(n) symmetry. At finite temperatures the SU(n) symmetry is broken and the neutral modes decay with a finite rate which varies as $T^2$ at low temperatures. Various experimental predictions and implications which follow from the exact solution are described in detail, focusing on tunneling experiments through point contacts.Comment: 19 pages (two column), 5 post script figures appended, 3.0 REVTE