John Chalker

Abstract:

We discuss the behaviour of a quantum Hall system when two Landau levels with opposite spin and combined filling factor near unity are brought into energetic coincidence using an in-plane component of magnetic field. We focus on the interpretation of recent experiments under these conditions [Zeitler et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 866 (2001); Pan et al, Phys. Rev. B 64, 121305 (2001)], in which a large resistance anisotropy develops at low temperatures. Modelling the systems involved as Ising quantum Hall ferromagnets, we suggest that this transport anisotropy reflects domain formation induced by a random field arising from isotropic sample surface roughness.

Abstract:

We study quantum Hall ferromagnets in the presence of a random electrostatic impurity potential. Describing these systems with a classical nonlinear sigma model and using analytical estimates supported by results from numerical simulations, we examine the nature of the ground state as a function of disorder strength, Delta, and deviation, deltanu, of the average Landau level filling factor from unity. Screening of an impurity potential requires distortions of the spin configuration, and in the absence of Zeeman coupling there is a disorder-driven, zero-temperature phase transition from a ferromagnet at small Delta and /deltanu/ to a spin glass at larger Delta or /deltanu/. We examine ground-state response functions and excitations.

Abstract:

We reexamine the disorder-dominated multicritical point of the two-dimensional +/-J Ising model, known as the Nishimori point (NP). At the NP we investigate numerically and analytically the behavior of the disorder correlator, familiar from the self-dual description of the pure critical point of the two-dimensional Ising model. We consider the logarithmic average and the q-th moments of this correlator in the ensemble average over randomness, for continuous q in the range 01 and q<0. Using properties on the Nishimori line we show that the first moment (q=1) of the disorder correlator is exactly one for all separations. The spectrum of scaling dimensions at the NP is not parabolic in q.

Abstract:

We consider network models for localisation problems belonging to symmetry class C. This symmetry class arises in a description of the dynamics of quasiparticles for disordered spin-singlet superconductors which have a Bogoliubov - de Gennes Hamiltonian that is invariant under spin rotations but not under time-reversal. Our models include but also generalise the one studied previously in the context of the spin quantum Hall effect. For these systems we express the disorder-averaged conductance and density of states in terms of sums over certain classical random walks, which are self-avoiding and have attractive interactions. A transition between localised and extended phases of the quantum system maps in this way to a similar transition for the classical walks. In the case of the spin quantum Hall effect, the classical walks are the hulls of percolation clusters, and our approach provides an alternative derivation of a mapping first established by Gruzberg, Read and Ludwig, Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 4254 (1999).