New Class of Landau Levels and Hall Phases in a 2D Electron Gas Subject to an Inhomogeneous Magnetic Field: An Analytic Solution

TL;DR

This paper analytically solves for bound states and Hall phases in a 2D electron gas under an inhomogeneous magnetic field, revealing novel localized states, spin currents, and phase transitions.

Contribution

It introduces an exact analytic solution for electron states in a non-uniform magnetic field, connecting impurity physics with Landau levels and uncovering new Hall phase behaviors.

Findings

Radially distorted Landau levels identified

Magnetic field induces spin-dependent density and current oscillations

Hall conductivity exhibits sharp sign flips at specific Fermi energies

Abstract

An analytic closed form solution is derived for the bound states of electrons subject to a static, inhomogeneous ($1/r$-decaying) magnetic field, including the Zeeman interaction. The solution provides access to many-body properties of a two-dimensional, non-interacting, electron gas in the thermodynamic limit. Radially distorted Landau levels can be identified as well as magnetic field induced density and current oscillations close to the magnetic impurity. These radially localised oscillations depend strongly on the coupling of the spin to the magnetic field, which give rise to non-trivial spin currents. Moreover, the Zeeman interaction introduces a lowest flat band for $E_F=0^+$ assuming a spin $g_s$-factor of two. Surprisingly, in this case the charge and current densities can be computed analytically in the thermodynamic limit. Numerical calculations show that the total magnetic response of the electron gas remains diamagnetic (similar to Landau levels) independent of the Fermi energy. However, the contribution of certain, infinitely degenerate energy levels may become paramagnetic. Furthermore, numerical computations of the Hall conductivity reveal asymptotic properties of the electron gas, which are driven by the anisotropy of the vector potential instead of the magnetic field, i.e. become independent of spin. Eventually, the distorted Landau levels give rise to different Hall conductivity phases, which are characterized by sharp sign flips at specific Fermi energies. Overall, our work merges "impurity" with Landau-level physics, which provides novel physical insights, not only locally, but also in the asymptotic limit. This paves the way for a large number of future theoretical as well as experimental investigations.