Skyrmions in Quantum Hall States

Jesper Romers - April 09 2010

Abstract

When a 2D electron gas is subjected to a large magnetic field, the electrons 
organize in Landau levels and a new state of matter appears: the quantum Hall 
state. We study these states in the regime where the spin degree of freedom 
of the electrons is not frozen out by the Zeeman effect. We find that the 
resulting spin textures are like the skyrmions familiar from sigma-model physics 
and that the wave functions have a very rich algebraic structure.