7 research outputs found
Quantum Hall Effect in a Holographic Model
We consider a holographic description of a system of strongly coupled
fermions in 2+1 dimensions based on a D7-brane probe in the background of
D3-branes, and construct stable embeddings by turning on worldvolume fluxes. We
study the system at finite temperature and charge density, and in the presence
of a background magnetic field. We show that Minkowski-like embeddings that
terminate above the horizon describe a family of quantum Hall states with
filling fractions that are parameterized by a single discrete parameter. The
quantization of the Hall conductivity is a direct consequence of the
topological quantization of the fluxes. When the magnetic field is varied
relative to the charge density away from these discrete filling fractions, the
embeddings deform continuously into black-hole-like embeddings that enter the
horizon and that describe metallic states. We also study the thermodynamics of
this system and show that there is a first order phase transition at a critical
temperature from the quantum Hall state to the metallic state.Comment: v2: 27 pages, 12 figures. There is a major revision in the
quantitative analysis. The qualitative results and conclusions are unchanged,
with one exception: we show that the quantum Hall state embeddings, which
exist for discrete values of the filling fraction, deform continuously into
metallic state embeddings away from these filling fraction