Gravity Dual of a Quantum Hall Plateau Transition

We show how to model the transition between distinct quantum Hall plateaus in terms of D-branes in string theory. A low energy theory of 2+1 dimensional fermions is obtained by considering the D3-D7 system, and the plateau transition corresponds to moving the branes through one another. We study the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2009-06
Main Authors: Davis, Joshua L, Kraus, Per, Shah, Akhil
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Branes
Broken symmetry
Coupling
Energy theory
Fermions
Gravitation
String theory
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:We show how to model the transition between distinct quantum Hall plateaus in terms of D-branes in string theory. A low energy theory of 2+1 dimensional fermions is obtained by considering the D3-D7 system, and the plateau transition corresponds to moving the branes through one another. We study the transition at strong coupling using gauge/gravity duality and the probe approximation. Strong coupling leads to a novel kind of plateau transition: at low temperatures the transition remains discontinuous due to the effects of dynamical symmetry breaking and mass generation, and at high temperatures is only partially smoothed out.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.0809.1876