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Physical review. B, Condensed matter

Field-theory approach to the quantum Hall effect

A. Cabo, Масуд Чайчиан

Published Nov 15, 1991• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Fradkin's formulation of statistical field theory is applied to the Coulomb interacting electron gas in a magnetic field. The electrons are confined to a plane in normal three-dimensional space and also interact with the physical three-dimensional electromagnetic field. The magnetic-translation-group Ward identities are derived. By using them, it is shown that the exact electron propagator is diagonalized in the basis of the wave functions of the free electron in a magnetic field whenever the magnetic-translation-group symmetry is unbroken. The general tensor structure of the polarization operator is obtained and used to show that the Chern-Simons action always describes the Hall-effect properties of the system. A general proof of the Str\^eda formula for the Hall conductivity is presented. It follows that the coefficient of the Chern-Simons terms in the long-wavelength approximation is exactly given by this relation. Such a formula, expressing the Hall conductivity as a simple derivative, in combination with a diagonal form of the full propagator, allows us to obtain a simple expression for the filling factor and the Hall conductivity. Indeed, these results, after assuming that the chemical potential lies in a gap of the density of states, lead to the conclusion that the Hall conductivity is given without corrections by ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\sigma}}}_{\mathit{x}\mathit{y}}$=\ensuremath{\nu}${\mathit{e}}^{2}$/h, where \ensuremath{\nu} is the filling factor. In addition, it follows that the filling factor is independent of the magnetic field if the value of the chemical potential remains in the gap.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.44.10768

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Fradkin's formulation of statistical field theory is applied to the Coulomb interacting electron gas in a magnetic field. The electrons are confined to a plane in normal three-dimensional space and also interact with the physical three-dimensional electromagnetic field. The magnetic-translation-group Ward identities are derived. By using them, it is shown that the exact electron propagator is diagonalized in the basis of the wave functions of the free electron in a magnetic field whenever the magnetic-translation-group symmetry is unbroken. The general tensor structure of the polarization operator is obtained and used to show that the Chern-Simons action always describes the Hall-effect properties of the system. A general proof of the Str^eda formula for the Hall conductivity is presented. It follows that the coefficient of the Chern-Simons terms in the long-wavelength approximation is exactly given by this relation. Such a formula, expressing the Hall conductivity as a simple derivative, in combination with a diagonal form of the full propagator, allows us to obtain a simple expression for the filling factor and the Hall conductivity. Indeed, these results, after assuming that the chemical potential lies in a gap of the density of states, lead to the conclusion that the Hall conductivity is given without corrections by \ensuremathσxy{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\sigma}}}_{\mathit{x}\mathit{y}}\ensuremathσxy​=\ensuremath{\nu}e2{\mathit{e}}^{2}e2/h, where \ensuremath{\nu} is the filling factor. In addition, it follows that the filling factor is independent of the magnetic field if the value of the chemical potential remains in the gap.
We consider a two-dimensional gas of interacting fermions in presence of an external constant magnetic field: the system is extended and homogeneous, and thus assumed to be invariant under magnetic translations. Working within the Hartree-Fock approximation, we analyze the system directly in the thermodynamic limit by solving a self-consistent fixed-point equation for the one-particle density matrix. We prove that, provided that the interactions among fermions are sufficiently weak, there exists a unique one-particle density matrix that solves the self-consistency condition. By choosing the Fermi-Dirac distribution as the function in the fixed-point equation, this approach can describe both positive and zero-temperature cases. At zero temperature and when the chemical potential of the non-interacting system lies in a spectral gap of the free Landau operator, our self-consistent solution is an orthogonal projection (an "interacting" effective Fermi projection). We prove that its integrated density of states varies linearly with the external magnetic field, provided the interaction is weak enough: the slope of this variation is quantized and independent of the interaction. According to the Středa formula, this can be seen as yet another expression of the universality of the quantum Hall effect in weakly interacting systems, at least within the Hartree-Fock approximation.
The formalism introduced in a previous paper is used for discussing the Coulomb interaction of many electrons moving in two space-dimensions in the presence of a strong magnetic field. The matrix element of the Coulomb interaction is evaluated in the new basis, whose states are invariant under discrete translations (up to a gauge transformation). This paper is devoted to the case of low filling factor, thus we limit ourselves to the lowest Landau level and to spins all oriented along the magnetic field. For the case of filling factor νf = 1/u we give an Ansatz on the state of many electrons which provides a good approximated solution of the Hartree–Fock equation. For general filling factor νf = u′/u a trial state is given which converges very rapidly to a solution of the self-consistent equation. We generalize the Hartree–Fock equation by considering some correlation: all quantum states are allowed for the u′ electrons with the same translation quantum numbers. Numerical results are given for the mean energy and the energy bands, for some values of the filling factor (νf = 1/2, 1/3, 2/3, 1/4, 3/4, 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5). Our results agree numerically with the Charge Density Wave approach. The boundary conditions are shown to be very important: only large systems (degeneracy of Landau level over 200) are not affected by the boundaries. Therefore results obtained on small scale systems are somewhat unreliable. The relevance of the results for the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect is briefly discussed.
The fractional quantum Hall effect was experimentally discovered in 1982. It was observed that the Hall conductivity σyx of a two-dimensional electron system is quantized, σyx=e2/3h, in the vicinity of the Landau level filling factor ν=1/3. In 1983, Laughlin proposed a trial many-body wave function, which he claimed described a “new state of matter”—a homogeneous incompressible liquid with fractionally charged quasiparticles. Here, I develop an exact diagonalization theory that allows one to calculate the energy and other physical properties of the ground and excited states of a system of N two-dimensional Coulomb interacting electrons in a strong magnetic field. I analyze the energies, electron densities, and other physical properties of the systems with N≤7 electrons continuously as a function of magnetic field in the range 1/4≲ν<1. The results show that both the ground and excited states of the system resemble a sliding Wigner crystal whose parameters are influenced by the magnetic field. Energy gaps in the many-particle spectra appear and disappear as the magnetic field changes. I also calculate the physical properties of the ν=1/3 Laughlin state for N≤8 and compare the results with the exact ones. This comparison, as well as an analysis of some other statements published in the literature, show that the Laughlin state and its fractionally charged excitations do not describe the physical reality, neither at small N nor in the thermodynamic limit. The results obtained shed new light on the nature of the ground and excited states in the fractional quantum Hall effect.
The quantum Hall effect is one of the most challenging problems in condensed matter physics in which many rare physical phenomena like fractional charges and generally the fractional statistics are involved. In the integer quantum Hall effect the role of the disorder is more than others. The important point in describing these systems is that their bulk states should be gapful and in this sense the system should be incompressible. For describing the electron condensates in an arbitrary filling fraction with the odd denominator one needs the topological U(1) Chern-Simons effective field theory. Our motivation for using these field theories is the emergence of quantized conductivity. This effective field theory also has the ability of constructing the hierarchical fractional condensates with various filling factors. The excitations of these theories have fractional statistics which are investigated in this review. The non-Abelian Chern-Simons for quantum Hall systems will be also investigated. The interesting point is that the edge states of these systems are gapless and their excitations are equipped with the Kac-Moody algebra. The connection to the conformal field theories can be established using this point. The investigation of this correspondence is one of the aims of the present thesis. The connection to the logarithmic conformal field theories (e.g. for the Haldane-Rezaei wave function) is also reported in some works which will be addressed in this thesis.
Laughlin's quantum Hall wave function is obtained as an exact ground state of an N-particle Hamiltonian, in which the electrons themselves are coupled to the Chern-Simons field. The proof requires quantum field-theoretic methods in the Schr\"odinger picture, and clearly exhibits the relation to conformal field theory since the Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov connection shows up and the Laughlin ground state is recognized as a conformal block. A refined version of this approach can be applied for toroidal boundary conditions, i.e., the electrons are confined to the physical interior of the Hall sample. The result turns out to be a nontrivial modification of the p-fold degenerate Haldane-Rezayi wave function. Furthermore, it is shown that the degeneracy of the ground state is accounted for by the quantum group Uq(su2){U}_{q}{(su}_{2})Uq​(su2​) with deformation parameter $q=\mathrm{exp}(2\ensuremath{\pi}i/p)$ and p odd; put differently, the possible quantum numbers p of the quantum Hall effect, determining the filling fractions $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/p,$ can be explained by an underlying quantum symmetry.
We analyze the effect of Coulomb interactions on edge excitations of an electron gas confined in a bar of thickness WWW, and in the presence of a magnetic field corresponding to unit filling factor in the quantum Hall effect. We find that such long-range interactions between the edges result in a ground state with quasi-long-range order similar to a charge density wave. The spectral density of states vanishes at zero frequency and increases with frequency faster than any power law. We also find that the conductance of an infinitely long system is zero.