The effects of weak disorders on Quantum Hall critical points

TL;DR

This paper investigates how weak disorders affect quantum Hall critical points, identifying stable fixed points and lines in a disordered Dirac fermion system, with implications for integer and fractional quantum Hall transitions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed RG analysis of disorder effects on quantum Hall fixed points, revealing stability conditions and new fixed lines relevant to quantum Hall transitions.

Findings

Random mass is irrelevant along the fixed line.

Both vector and scalar potential disorders are marginal.

Identifies stable fixed points relevant to quantum Hall transitions.

Abstract

We study the consequences of random mass, random scalar potential and random vector potential on the line of clean fixed points between integer/fractional quantum Hall states and an insulator. This line of fixed points was first identified in a clean Dirac fermion system with both Chern-Simon coupling and Coulomb interaction in Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 80}, 5409 (1998). By performing a Renormalization Group analysis in 1/N (N is the No. of species of Dirac fermions) and the variances of three disorders $\Delta_{M}, \Delta_{V}, \Delta_{A}$, we find that $\Delta_{M}$ is irrelevant along this line, both $\Delta_{A}$ and $\Delta_{V}$ are marginal. With the presence of all the three disorders, the pure fixed line is unstable. Setting Chern-Simon interaction to zero, we find one non-trivial line of fixed points in $(\Delta_{A}, w)$ plane with dynamic exponent z=1 and continuously changing $\nu$, it is stable against small $(\Delta_{M},\Delta_{V})$ in a small range of the line $1< w < 1.31$, therefore it may be relevant to integer quantum Hall transition. Setting $\Delta_{M} =0$, we find a fixed plane with z=1, the part of this plane with $\nu > 1$ is stable against small $\Delta_{M}$, therefore it may be relevant to fractional quantum Hall transition.