Gravity Dual of a Quantum Hall Plateau Transition
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0809.1876,
title = {Gravity Dual of a Quantum Hall Plateau Transition},
author = {Joshua L. Davis and Per Kraus and Akhil Shah},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0809.1876},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
27 pages, 6 figures, harvmac; v2, references and minor comments added, version to be submitted to JHEP; v3, corrections to section 4