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

Universal structure of the edge states of the fractional quantum Hall states

We present an effective theory for the bulk fractional quantum Hall states on the Jain sequences on closed surfaces and show that it has a universal form whose structure does not change from fraction to fraction. The structure of this effective theory follows from the condition of global consistency of the flux attachment transformation on closed surfaces. We derive the theory of the edge states on a disk that follows naturally from this globally consistent theory on a torus. We find that, for a fully polarized two-dimensional electron gas, the edge states for all the Jain filling fractions $\nu=p/(2np+1)$ have only one propagating edge field that carries both energy and charge, and two non-propagating edge fields of topological origin that are responsible for the statistics of the excitations. Explicit results are derived for the electron and quasiparticle operators and for their propagators at the edge. We show that these operators create states with the correct charge and statistics. It is found that the tunneling density of states for all the Jain states scales with frequency as $|\omega|^{(1-\nu)/\nu}$.Comment: 10 page

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

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

Edge excitations and Topological orders in rotating Bose gases

The edge excitations and related topological orders of correlated states of a fast rotating Bose gas are studied. Using exact diagonalization of small systems, we compute the energies and number of edge excitations, as well as the boson occupancy near the edge for various states. The chiral Luttinger-liquid theory of Wen is found to be a good description of the edges of the bosonic Laughlin and other states identified as members of the principal Jain sequence for bosons. However, we find that in a harmonic trap the edge of the state identified as the Moore-Read (Pfaffian) state shows a number of anomalies. An experimental way of detecting these correlated states is also discussed.Comment: Results extended to larger systems. Improved presentatio

Characterization of fractional-quantum-Hall-effect quasiparticles

Composite fermions in a partially filled quasi-Landau level may be viewed as quasielectrons of the underlying fractional quantum Hall state, suggesting that a quasielectron is simply a dressed electron, as often is true in other interacting electron systems, and as a result has the same intrinsic charge and exchange statistics as an electron. This paper discusses how this result is reconciled with the earlier picture in which quasiparticles are viewed as fractionally-charged fractional-statistics ``solitons". While the two approaches provide the same answers for the long-range interactions between the quasiparticles, the dressed-electron description is more conventional and unifies the view of quasiparticle dynamics in and beyond the fractional quantum Hall regime.Comment: 11 pages, latex, no figure

Invariance of Charge of Laughlin Quasiparticles

A Quantum Antidot electrometer has been used in the first direct observation of the fractionally quantized electric charge. In this paper we report experiments performed on the integer i = 1, 2 and fractional f = 1/3 quantum Hall plateaus extending over a filling factor range of at least 27%. We find the charge of the Laughlin quasiparticles to be invariantly e/3, with standard deviation of 1.2% and absolute accuracy of 4%, independent of filling, tunneling current, and temperature.Comment: 4 pages, 5 fig

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

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

Edge reconstructions in fractional quantum Hall systems

Two dimensional electron systems exhibiting the fractional quantum Hall effects are characterized by a quantized Hall conductance and a dissipationless bulk. The transport in these systems occurs only at the edges where gapless excitations are present. We present a {\it microscopic} calculation of the edge states in the fractional quantum Hall systems at various filling factors using the extended Hamiltonian theory of the fractional quantum Hall effect. We find that at $\nu=1/3$ the quantum Hall edge undergoes a reconstruction as the background potential softens, whereas quantum Hall edges at higher filling factors, such as $\nu=2/5, 3/7$, are robust against reconstruction. We present the results for the dependence of the edge states on various system parameters such as temperature, functional form and range of electron-electron interactions, and the confining potential. Our results have implications for the tunneling experiments into the edge of a fractional quantum Hall system.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures; minor typos corrected; added 2 reference