Effective Field Theory of Fractional Quantized Hall Nematics

ORAL

Abstract

We present a Landau-Ginzburg theory for a fractional quantized Hall nematic state and the transition to it from an isotropic fractional quantum Hall state. This justifies Lifshitz-Chern-Simons theory -- which is shown to be its dual -- on a more microscopic basis and enables us to compute a ground state wave function in the symmetry-broken phase. In such a state of matter, the Hall resistance remains quantized while the longitudinal DC resistivity due to thermally-excited quasiparticles is anisotropic. We interpret recent experiments by Xia et al. (cond-mat/1109.3219) at Landau level filling factor $\nu =7/3$ in terms of our theory.

Authors

  • Michael Mulligan

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Chetan Nayak

    • Microsoft Station Q
    • University of California, Santa Barbara and Microsoft Station Q
    • Microsoft Research, University of California Santa Barbara
    • University of California at Santa Barbara and Station Q
  • Shamit Kachru

    • Stanford University