THE QUANTUM HALL EFFECT

Premios para estudiantes de Fsica del Instituto Nicols Cabrera Universidad Autnoma de Madrid
Estudiante: Gabriel Wolfgang Castellanos Gonzlez, 4 de Grado de Fsica Tutor: lvaro Martn Rodero, Departamento de Fsica Terica de la Materia Condensada Agradecimientos: Alfredo Levy Yeyati, Departamento de Fsica Terica de la Materia Condensada

Motivation of the main paper:

The QHE was discovered by Klaus von Klitzing in 1980 when he was able to measure plateaus and confirm quantization of the Hall resistance and was awarded the 1895 Nobel Prize on Physics. The claim of this paper is explain in a qualitative way all the topics related with the Hall effect and 2DEG: classical Hall effect, Landau levels and resistance quantization, an approach to the real quantum case, obtaining a 2DEG; and so give a solid explanation of the Integer Quantum Hall Effect (IQHE), namely, of what von Klitzing found in 1980. Mathematical treatment are avoid for a better understanding of readers, trying to present the ideas in intuitive way when possible. However some formulas shall have to be written. As a view of the QHE at the present, QSHE and 2D topological insulators will be introduced.

Typical figure of QHE: data measurement plotted for both Hall and longitudinal resistance; the approximate density of states, which shows localized and extended states; the Hall bar with its ohmic contacts (in data plotting is shown the way voltage its measured from resistance is obtained).

(*) Preliminary note: In this paper Gaussian units are used (for magnetic fieldsB=H/c)

INTRODUCTION Edwin Hall discovered his eponymous effect while he was working in his doctoral thesis in 1879, studying the effect of magnetic fields in conductors carrying a current. He found that when a sheet of metal is placed perpendicular to a magnetic field, with a current flowing within the conductor, an additional voltage drop arises perpendicular to the current. From this voltage, Hall measured a resistance proportional to the magnetic field and the density of carriers independent of the material. After the discovery of J.J. Thomson of the electron in 1897, Paul Drude proposed that valence electrons would be able to move freely within the conductor while ions a positive mass and the core electrons would be immobile. Thus the kinetic theory of gases together with the idea of an electron gas would explain the electrical and the thermic conductivity of metals as well as experimental phenomena related to conductors like the Hall effect. In the Hall effect the force acting on electrons ! is the Lorentzs force ! ! !!!!! ! ! !!! , which makes them perform circular orbits with a well-defined cyclotron frequency !! ! !"!!". The Hall voltage arises from an electric field perpendicular to the current that compensates Lorentzs force so total force vanishes. Thus the resistivity, that relates the electric field with the density current, is not a scalar, but a tensor since it depends of the direction:
!! ! !! ! !"# ! !"# !!

part. In quantum mechanics the Hamiltonian gives the behaviour of a particle. When a magnetic field is taken into account is its potential vector what is reflected ! ! !!!, which can take more than one form the particular election being called gauge:
!! ! ! ! !! !!!!! !!!!! ! !!"! !! ! !!

The Landau gauge is a suitable gauge since it leads to a shifted quantum harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian:
!! !!! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !! ! ! ! !! ! !!!!! ! !!! ! ! !! ! !! ! ! !

Namely, !! is the zero magnetic field resistivity !! ! !!!! ! ! and !!" ! !!!" ! !!!"# is the so-called Hall resistivity !! . With the development of quantum mechanics novel theories and effects in transport were enounced. Lev Landau studied the quantization of cyclotron orbits and found that a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) had the energy quantized. To understand this well focus at the mechanical !

Each level !! is called a Landau level and !! is the center of motion (the classical center of coordinates for the ! circular orbit) which is defined as !! ! !! !! ! with !! ! !! !!!! and !! ! !!!!" as the magnetic length, which is interpreted as the region over the wave function spreads. It is in the range 50-100 ! . In addition its remarkable that electron-electron interactions has not been taken into account. Since its energy spectrum is discrete the density of states (number of states per energy accessible to the system) also discrete meaning that each Landau level has a high degeneration. This degeneracy can be explained by geometrical arguments: the 2DEG is in a finite device ! ! !! ! !! and !! is the center of motion, different for each electron. Thus a wide !! is filled up with !! ! !! !!!! ! !"!!!!!!! electron states. This is the degeneracy factor, the number of states per Landau level. How can this be interpreted? Classically this would be seen as !! electron orbits extended in the ! direction. But since ! ! !" is the magnetic flux, !!!! is also. Whats its meaning? Inside the device the magnetic flux becomes quantized since energy and charge are quantized, and thus !! ! !!!! is the quanta of magnetic flux. Each electron carries out an integer number of quantum fluxes, each per Landau Level. But ! ! !!! ! !"#!!! is number of states per

surface, and it has the same meaning that number of electrons per surface (as we define in the Drude model) since each state is occupied by an electron. If we write this expression in the Hall resistivity !! : ! ! !! ! ! ! !"# !" The resistivity becomes quantized with a value of !!! ! ! !"#$!! !"#!!. Its measured in regions called plateaus where the number of electrons was an integer multiple of the number of available eigenstates at a given energy. It has been measured with a precession of 0.02 ppm and also has given a more accuracy value of the fine-structure constant. This makes it a relevant value in metrology and it has become the standard unit of resistance. QHE: WHAT IS MEASURED? The previous theory explains only the condition for resistance quantization. Actually more factors must be taken into account: the temperature; the impurities and the lattice; and the finite size of the sample. The effect of temperature is related with the wide of plateaus. The theory developed is an approximation at zero temperature. QHE is measured in a regime from 4 K to 8 mK in most samples. Impurities, defects in the lattice and temperature cause a disorder, which can be seen as a random potential at the semiconductor interface. This random potential scatters the wave function of electrons broadening the energy and thus their DOS, which becomes now a continuous curve oscillating between Landau levels. Disorder effects apparently would destroy the QHE but one still measure resistance quantization with high precision. This is because the effect of disorder is localization of electron states. What does localization mean? Imagine the random potential as a series of valleys and peaks. Energy is conserved so electrons move in equipotential lines, which by the effect of disorder are closed and then electrons are trapped in this closed !

trajectories resulting in localized states. In a plateau region states are localized for a wide gap of magnetic field and remembering the magnetic length now a localization length can be defined, which depends of temperature and magnetic field. Transition between plateaus occurs when the localization length becomes bigger than the sample size and then a dissipative current is possible, however across impurities and defects. This states that made a net transport across the sample are called extended states and explain the nonzero longitudinal resistivity measured. But if in a plateau regime currents are not possible what is really measured? When thinking of the sample one has to speak of the bulk sample and the edge sample. Things are quite different from the bulk to the edge. The edges can be seen as a confining potential, like an infinite square well, making that Landau levels raise near the edges and when reach the Fermi energy then states become extended but its forwards in one edge and backwards in the other. This happens only in well definite regions in the edge so transport is onedimensional. But in the study of onedimensional channels of transport Landauer formula appear. It says that transport in one-dimensional channels gives a current that depends of conductance quantization !! ! !! ! , an electrochemical potential difference between ohmic contacts and scattering terms, which are expressed as reflexion/transmission coefficients. But if backscattering occurs in the sample then edge states could be percolated from one edge to the other and resistance measures in a plateau wouldnt be constant. The reason is that magnetic length is shorter than localization length so when an edge electron finds an impurity he will simply skirt which classically can be seen as skipping orbits at the edge. Then transport is diffusiveness and this explains the zero longitudinal resistivity and conductivity !!! ! !!! that is measured. But since its possible a Hall resistivity measure a potential drop must exist between edges. Return again on the Landauer formula. A Hall bar has several ohmic contacts,

generally about six contacts (as can be seen in the figure): the source and drain contacts of the transistor across which the current flows and four additional contacts two in each edge for longitudinal and crossed voltage measures. Contacts in the edge have equal electrochemical potential, which are same to one of the source/drain contacts, but therere different electrochemical potential in each edge so from one edge to the other theres a potential drop and this is the voltage measured that gives a quantized value of resistivity. Edge states and disorder are essential in QHE giving an explanation of this effect and also of the immutable plateaus, which makes possible high precision measures. What this means is that QHE is a bulk effect: its the macroscopic resistance, not the microscopic, which becomes quantized. The impurities, disorder and sample size dont change the quantization. This is why QHE is called to be topological invariant. THE DEVICES: REALIZATION OF 2DEG The basic scheme involves a semiconductor, an insulator and the density charge necessary to form the 2DEG, which is located in the interface between semiconductor and insulator. The realization of 2DEG is possible by inversion layer. Inversion layers are obtained in semiconductor interfaces. The energy in solids is arranged in bands and valence electrons form the valence band underneath the conduction band by a small energy gap in the semiconductor case (approx. 0.5-1.5 eV). Adding impurities that accept or give electrons can modify charge density of semiconductors. Inversion layer require acceptor impurities resulting in ptype semiconductors. When an electric field (created by the charge density) is applied electrons accumulate in the interface insulator-semiconductor and the conduction band bends below the Fermi level giving a quasi two-dimensional gas (the inversion layer is around 3-5 nm wide). There are two main devices: SiMOSFET (a type of transistor) in which !

QHE was discovered; and AlGaAs/GaAs alloy, mostly used in metrology. QSHE AND 2D TOPOLOGICAL INSULATORS QHE involve high magnetic fields that can reach even 30 Teslas. These high fields can only be obtained with superconductors making this effect expensive if in addition low temperatures as are considered. One would rather ask if there could be an effect without involving magnetic fields. Quantum spin Hall effect was theorized as effect that would arise in those systems in which spin-orbit coupling is very strong. This coupling contributes with a force similar to Lorentz force if a gas is confined in a plane and an electric field is applied in the plane so a Landau level structure should appear for each spin orientation (typically pictured as an upper and lower arrow) and no magnetic field is necessary. If in QHE edge state electrons travels in two different lanes forward and backward motion the spin-orbit coupling gives rise to four channels: a spinless forward channel would rise into an spin-up forward and spin-down backward channels and the same for the backward spinless channel. Backscattering is suppressed also, but by a different mechanism. Is remarkable that this will remain only to the case of single pairs of QSH edge states. If there are two forward movers and two backward movers in an edge channel then an electron can be scattered from a forward to a backward channel without reversing its spin and without perfect destructive interference resulting dissipation transport. This is the heart of 2D topological insulators a new material that conducts in its edges and insulates in the bulk, with same topological behaviour explained before which have become attractive to both theoreticians and experimentalists for they have revealed new properties unexpected until few years ago.

CONCLUSION Quantum Hall effect has revealed great surprises since physicist realised after von Klitzing work that it was not easy as one could think. Many subjacent works were behind this effect to understand what really happened in plateaus and in transitions from one plateau to other. QHE has joined areas of physics from semiconductors to quantum field theory and condensed matter physics. Even nowadays still being attractive and has surprised physicist with the prediction and observation of topological insulators. In this paper we have overviewed 2D topological insulators, which promise having a great potential in spintronics electronic devices based on electron spin.

Main bibliography and references

[1] R. E. Prange, S. M. Girvin, The Quantum Hall Effect, Springer, New York, 1990. [2] K. von Klitzing, Nobel lectures on Physics, 1985. [3] R. J. Haug, Edge-state transport in high magnetic fields, 1993. [4] Diapositivas de lvaro Martn, Departamento de Fsica Terica de la Materia Condensada, Universidad Autnoma de Madrid. [5] Yuri M. Galperin, Quantum Transport (Lectures Notes), 1998. [6] X. L. Qi, S. C. Zhang, The quantum spin Hall effect and topological insulators, arXiv, 2010. [7] K. V. Shalmova, Fsica de los Semiconductores, Editorial Mir, Mosc, 1975.