Classification of Disordered Phases of Quantum Hall Edge States

TL;DR

This paper investigates how impurity scattering influences the phases of fractional quantum Hall edge states, revealing symmetry restoration and phase transitions, with implications for tunneling behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a new coordinate system to analyze impurity effects and characterizes phase diagrams and transitions in disordered quantum Hall edges.

Findings

Disordered edges can have multiple phases with different symmetries.

Stable impurity phases tend to be more symmetric than clean edges.

Temperature-dependent tunneling can distinguish between impurity phases.

Abstract

The effects of impurity scattering on a general Abelian fractional quantum Hall (FQH) edge state are analyzed within the chiral-Luttinger-liquid model of low-energy edge dynamics. We find that some disordered edges can have several different phases characterized by different symmetries. The stable impurity edge phases are in general more symmetric than the original clean system and demonstrate the phenomenon of dynamical symmetry restoration at low energies and long length scales. The phase transitions between different disordered phases are characterized by broken symmetries and obey Landau's symmetry breaking principle for continuous phase transitions. Phase diagrams for various edges are found using a new system of coordinates for the interactions between modes in a quantum Hall edge. The temperature dependence of tunneling through a point contact is calculated and is found to be able to distinguish different impurity edge phases of the same FQH state.