2010/05/28 by Roi Levy, Yigal Meir, Levy, Roi +1
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advancements in Semiconductor Devices and Circuit Design #Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) #FOS: Physical sciences #Magnetic Field Sensors Techniques #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1005.5245
4 pages, 4 figures
openalex publication_date 2010/05/28 · arxiv created 2010/05/31 · arxiv updated 2010/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The quantum Hall transition is one of the simplest and most studied quantum phase transitions. Nevertheless, the experimental observation of a new phase in this regime, the quantum Hall insulator, still remains a puzzle since the first report more than a decade ago, as it is in contradiction with all theoretical studies based on microscopically coherent quantum calculations. In this work we introduce into the coherent quantum theory a new ingredient - rare incoherent events, in a controlled manner. Using both direct numerical solutions and real-space renormalization, we demonstrate that these decoherence events stabilize the elusive quantum Hall insulator phase, which becomes even more stable with increasing temperature and voltage bias, in agreement with experiments.