Quantum Hall plateau transition as a transition between Anderson and band insulators

Adrianus M. M. Pruisken, D.T.N. de Lang, Leonid A. Ponomarenko +1 more

Xin Wan, Qiong Zhu, Guang-Ming Zhang

D. Shahar

Cui‐Zu Chang, Weiwei Zhao, Jian Li +4 more

Fundamental insight into the nature of the quantum phase transition from a superconductor to an insulator in two dimensions, or from one plateau to the next or to an insulator in the quantum Hall effect, has been revealed through the study of its scaling behavior. Here, we report on the experimental observation of a quantum phase transition from a quantum-anomalous-Hall insulator to an Anderson insulator in a magnetic topological insulator by tuning the chemical potential. Our experiment demonstrates the existence of scaling behavior from which we extract the critical exponent for this quantum phase transition. We expect that our work will motivate much further investigation of many properties of quantum phase transition in this new context.

D. N. Sheng, Zheng-Yu Weng

We demonstrate a universal scaling form of longitudinal resistance in the quantum critical region of metal-insulator transitions. This is based on numerical results of three-dimensional Anderson transitions (with and without magnetic field), two-dimensional quantum Hall plateau to insulator transition, as well as experimental data of the recently discovered two-dimensional metal-insulator transition. The associated reflection symmetry and a peculiar logarithmic form of the beta function exist over a wide range in which the resistance can change by more than 1 order of magnitude. Interesting implications for the two-dimensional metal-insulator transition are discussed.

Leon Schoonderwoerd, Frank Pollmann, Gunnar Möller

We present numerical evidence of an interaction-driven quantum Hall plateau transition between a $|C|>1$ Chern Insulator (CI) and a $ν= 1/3$ Laughlin state in the Harper-Hofstadter model. We study the model at flux densities $p/q$, where the lowest Landau level (LLL) manifold comprises $p$ magnetic sub-bands. For weak interactions, the model realises integer CIs corresponding to filled sub-bands, while strongly interacting candidate states include fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states at LLL filling fractions $ν=r/t$. These phases may compete at the same particle density when $p=t$. As a concrete example, we numerically explore the physics at flux density $n_ϕ = 3/11$, where we show evidence that a direct transition occurs between a CI and a $ν= 1/3$ Laughlin state, which we characterise in terms of its critical, topological and entanglement properties. We also show that strong interactions generically stabilise a $ν= 1/3$ Laughlin state even when the LLL is split into multiple bands, and introduce a powerful methodology to extract its topological entanglement entropy by exploiting the scaling of magnetic length with $n_ϕ$.