Electron Interactions and Transport Between Coupled Quantum Hall Edges

TL;DR

This paper investigates how electron-electron interactions influence transport properties in a multilayer quantum Hall system, revealing temperature-dependent conductivity and conductance fluctuation behaviors consistent with experimental observations.

Contribution

It provides an exact treatment of Coulomb interactions and disorder effects on transport in a chiral metal formed by coupled quantum Hall edges, highlighting temperature effects.

Findings

Conductivity increases with temperature.

Conductance fluctuation correlation length inversely proportional to temperature.

Results align with recent experimental data.

Abstract

We examine the effects of electron-electron interactions on transport between edge states in a multilayer integer quantum Hall system. The edge states of such a system, coupled by interlayer tunneling, form a two-dimensional, chiral metal at the sample surface. We calculate the temperature-dependent conductivity and the amplitude of conductance fluctuations in this chiral metal, treating Coulomb interactions and disorder exactly in the weak-tunneling limit. We find that the conductivity increases with increasing temperature, as observed in recent experiments, and we show that the correlation length characterising conductance fluctuations varies inversely with temperature.