722 Ch.

12 Quantum Hall Effect

Hall ferromagnets (QHFM) with a saturated spontaneous moment and

the external field (which we previously credited with driving the system
to full spin alignment) plays a merely subsidiary role by picking the di-
rection of spin polarization. It was a startling development to find that
at least some of the major QHE plateaus are associated with itinerant
ferr~magnetism~~.
It need not be true that all incompressible quantum fluid states
are at the same time fully polarized itinerant ferromagnets, but this is
thought to be the case at least for u = 1 and u = 1/3. It is, in any
case, interesting to find a common mechanism behind an integer and
a fractional plateau, which lends further justification to the view that
IQHE and FQHE should be understood in a unified framework. Much
work has been done on the u = 1 QHFM for which we cite a few results.
It is found that the exchange hole effect manages to keep the system
fully polarized for all (bare) g > 0 and consequently, we may think of the
ground state in terms of the simple (essentially spinless fermion) picture
we used in the previous sections. However, the nature of the excitations
changes dramatically as g is decreased. For large enough g, the low-
est quasielectron excitation corresponds to putting an electron into the
next Landau level; it is a simple localized S” = 1/2 object. For lower
g, it is becoming more and more favourable to compose the excitation
from reversed-spin states. At the same time, the system is approaching
the limit of an isotropic two-dimensional ferromagnet which can sup-
port topologically non-trivial vortex-like excitations called s k y r ~ n i o n s ~ ~
In the original sense, skyrmions are spatially unbounded, infinite-spin
excitations of an isotropic model. However, in the QHE context, one
may speak about skyrmions also for sufficiently small g > 0, apparently
including the values which are realized in GaAs heterostructures [370].
Let us visualize skyrmions. Assume that the external field is t, so
that in the v = 1 ground state, all spins are 4. Now create a single
331t should not be forgotten that we have in mind essentially isotropic ferromag-
nets so that at T > 0, the Mermin-Wagner theorem forbids spontaneous ordering.
However, ~ B being T apparently much smaller than the exchange interaction, the
system is almost ferromagnetic, and the external field takes care of the surviving
long-wavelength fluctuations. The temperature dependence of the spin polarization
is a difficult issue.
34Named after T.H.R. Skyrme who studied a related field theoretical model [367].