Gravity Dual of a Quantum Hall Plateau Transition

TL;DR

This paper models quantum Hall plateau transitions using string theory D-branes, revealing a strong coupling regime where the transition remains discontinuous at low temperatures and is partially smoothed at high temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces a string theory D-brane model for quantum Hall transitions and analyzes the effects of strong coupling and temperature on the transition behavior.

Findings

Transition remains discontinuous at low temperatures due to symmetry breaking.

High temperatures partially smooth the plateau transition.

Strong coupling effects are captured via gauge/gravity duality.

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.