Theory for the Charge-Density-Wave Mechanism of 3D Quantum Hall Effect
Abstract
The charge-density-wave (CDW) mechanism of the 3D quantum Hall effect has been observed recently in ZrTe [Tang et al., Nature 569, 537 (2019)]. Different from previous cases, the CDW forms on a one-dimensional (1D) band of Landau levels, which strongly depends on the magnetic field. However, its theory is still lacking. We develop a theory for the CDW mechanism of 3D quantum Hall effect. The theory can capture the main features in the experiments. We find a magnetic field induced second-order phase transition to the CDW phase. We find that electron-phonon interactions, rather than electron-electron interactions, dominate the order parameter. We extract the electron-phonon coupling constant from the non-Ohmic I-V relation. We point out a commensurate-incommensurate CDW crossover in the experiment. More importantly, our theory explores a rare case, in which a magnetic field can induce an order-parameter phase transition in one direction but a topological phase transition in other two directions, both depend on one magnetic field.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2003.02520,
title = {Theory for the Charge-Density-Wave Mechanism of 3D Quantum Hall Effect},
author = {Fang Qin and Shuai Li and Z. Z. Du and C. M. Wang and Wenqing Zhang and Dapeng Yu and Hai-Zhou Lu and X. C. Xie},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.02520},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
6 pages, 4 figures, references and figures updated