Transport properties of a two-dimensional electron liquid at high magnetic field

Abstract

The chiral Luttinger liquid model for the edge dynamics of a two-dimensional electron gas in a strong magnetic field is derived from coarse-graining and a lowest Landau level projection procedure at arbitrary filling factors $\nu <1$ -- without reference to the quantum Hall effect. Based on this model, we develop a formalism to calculate the Landauer-Büttiker conductances in generic experimental set-ups including multiple leads and voltage probes. In the absence of tunneling between the edges the "ideal" Hall conductances ($G_{ij}=\frac{e^2\nu }{h}$ if lead $j$ is immediately upstream of lead $i$, and $G_{ij}=0$ otherwise) are recovered. Tunneling of quasiparticles of fractional charge $e^{\ast }$ between different edges is then included as an additional term in the Hamiltonian. In the limit of weak tunneling we obtain explicit expressions for the corrections to the ideal conductances. As an illustration of the formalism we compute the current- and temperature-dependent resistance $R_{xx}(I,T)$ of a quantum point contact localized at the center of a gate-induced constriction in a quantum Hall bar. The exponent $\alpha$ in the low-current relation $R_{xx}(I,0)\sim I^{\alpha -2}$ shows a nontrivial dependence on the strength of the inter-edge interaction, and its value changes as $e^{\ast }{V}_H$, where $V_H=\frac{hI}{\nu e^2}$ is the Hall voltage, falls below a characteristic crossover energy $\frac{\hslash c}{d}$, where $c$ is the edge wave velocity and $d$ is the length of the constriction. The consequences of this crossover are discussed vis-a-vis recent experiments in the weak tunneling regime.

20 pages, 8 figures, Revtex4, adjourned with referee's comments, added references and typos corrected

References in corpus (5)

• Evidence for non-linear quasiparticle tunneling between fractional quantum Hall edges
• Bunching of Fractionally-Charged Quasiparticles Tunneling through High Potential Barriers
• Relevance of inter-composite fermion interaction to the edge Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid
• Shot Noise and the Transmission of Dilute Laughlin Quasiparticles
• Theory of measuring the "Luttinger-g" of a one-dimensional quantum dot

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Bethe-Ansatz density-functional theory of ultracold repulsive fermions in one-dimensional optical lattices
• Inter-edge strong-to-weak scattering evolution at a constriction in the fractional quantum Hall regime
• Edge State Tunneling in a Split Hall Bar Model
• Temperature Dependence of the Tunneling Amplitude between Quantum Hall Edges
• Density-functional theory of inhomogeneous electron systems in thin quantum wires
• Quasi-particle tunneling at a constriction in a fractional quantum Hall state
• Edge Magnetoplasmons in Quantum Hall Line Junction Systems
• Transport through constricted quantum Hall edge systems: beyond the quantum point contact
• Metal-Insulator Transition Tuned by External Gates in Hall Systems with Constrictions
• On transport in quantum Hall systems with constrictions
• Electrostatics of Edge States of Quantum Hall Systems with Constrictions: Metal--Insulator Transition Tuned by External Gates