Hall Viscosity Research Articles

Relativistic gravity and parity-violating nonrelativistic effective field theories

We show that the relativistic gravity theory can offer a framework to formulate the non-relativistic effective field theory in a general coordinate invariant way. We focus on the parity violating case in 2+1 dimensions which is particularly appropriate for the study on quantum Hall effects and chiral superfluids. We discuss how the non-relativistic spacetime structure emerges from relativistic gravity. We present covariant maps and constraints that relate the field contents in the two theories, which also serve as the holographic dictionary in context of gauge/gravity duality. A low energy effective action for fractional quantum Hall states is constructed, which captures universal geometric properties and generates non-universal corrections systematically. We give another holographic example with dyonic black brane background to calculate thermodynamic and transport properties of strongly coupled non-relativistic fluids in magnetic field. In particular, by identifying the shift function in the gravity as minus of guiding center velocity, we obtain the Hall viscosity with its relation to Landau orbital angular momentum density proportional to Wen-Zee shift. Our formalism has a good projection to lowest Landau level.

Hall viscosity revealed via density response

Quantum Hall systems are recently shown to possess a quantity sensitive to the spatial geometry and topology of the system, dubbed the Hall viscosity $\eta_H$. Despite the extensive theoretical discussions on its properties, the question of how to measure $\eta_H$ still poses a challenge. In this paper, we present a general relation between Hall viscosity and susceptibility for systems with Galilean invariance. Thus, it allows for determination of $\eta_H$ through density response signatures. The relations are verified in the integer quantum Hall example, and is further illustrated in an effective hydrodynamic analysis. Since the derivation is based on Kubo formulae and assumes no more than conservation laws and translational symmetry, the results are applicable to a wide range of systems.

Galilean invariance at quantum Hall edge

We construct the theory of a chiral Luttinger liquid that lives on the boundary of a Galilean invariant quantum Hall fluid. In contrast to previous studies, Galilean invariance of the total (bulk plus edge) theory is guaranteed. We consider electromagnetic response at the edge and calculate momentum- and frequency-dependent electric conductivity and argue that its experimental measurement can provide a new means to determine the shift and bulk Hall viscosity.

The Euler current and relativistic parity odd transport

For a spacetime of odd dimensions endowed with a unit vector field, we introduce a new topological current that is identically conserved and whose charge is equal to the Euler character of the even dimensional spacelike foliations. The existence of this current allows us to introduce new Chern-Simons-type terms in the effective field theories describing relativistic quantum Hall states and (2+1) dimensional superfluids. Using effective field theory, we calculate various correlation functions and identify transport coefficients. In the quantum Hall case, this current provides the natural relativistic generalization of the Wen-Zee term, required to characterize the shift and Hall viscosity in quantum Hall systems. For the superfluid case this term is required to have nonzero Hall viscosity and to describe superfluids with non s-wave pairing.

Hall viscosity: A link between quantum Hall systems, plasmas and liquid crystals

In this Letter, the assumption of two simple postulates is shown to give rise to a Hall viscosity term via an action principle formulation. The rationale behind the two postulates is clearly delineated, and the connections to an intrinsic angular momentum are emphasized. By employing this methodology, it is shown that Hall viscosity appears in a wide range of fields, and the interconnectedness of quantum Hall systems, plasmas and nematic liquid crystals is hypothesized. Potential avenues for experimental and theoretical work arising from this cross-fertilization are also indicated.

Low-energy effective theory in the bulk for transport in a topological phase

We construct a low-energy effective action for a two-dimensional non-relativistic topological (i.e.\ gapped) phase of matter in a continuum, which completely describes all of its bulk electrical, thermal, and stress-related properties in the limit of low frequencies, long distances, and zero temperature, without assuming either Lorentz or Galilean invariance. This is done by generalizing Luttinger's approach to thermoelectric phenomena, via the introduction of a background vielbein (i.e.\ gravitational) field and spin connection a la Cartan, in addition to the electromagnetic vector potential, in the action for the microscopic degrees of freedom (the matter fields). Crucially, the geometry of spacetime is allowed to have timelike and spacelike torsion. These background fields make all natural invariances--- under U(1) gauge transformations, translations in both space and time, and spatial rotations---appear locally, and corresponding conserved currents and the stress tensor can be obtained, which obey natural continuity equations. On integrating out the matter fields, we derive the most general form of a local bulk induced action to first order in derivatives of the background fields, from which thermodynamic and transport properties can be obtained. We show that the gapped bulk cannot contribute to low-temperature thermoelectric transport other than the ordinary Hall conductivity; the other thermoelectric effects (if they occur) are thus purely edge effects. The coupling to "reduced" spacelike torsion is found to be absent in minimally-coupled models, and using a generalized Belinfante stress tensor, the stress response to time-dependent vielbeins (i.e.\ strains) is the Hall viscosity, which is robust against perturbations and related to the spin current as in earlier work.

Spacetime symmetries of the quantum Hall effect

We study the symmetries of non-relativistic systems with an emphasis on applications to the fractional quantum Hall effect. A source for the energy current of a Galilean system is introduced and the non-relativistic diffeomorphism invariance studied in previous work is enhanced to a full spacetime symmetry, allowing us to derive a number of Ward identities. These symmetries are smooth in the massless limit of the lowest Landau level. We develop a formalism for Newton-Cartan geometry with torsion to write these Ward identities in a covariant form. Previous results on the connection between Hall viscosity and Hall conductivity are reproduced.

Effective theory of two-dimensional chiral superfluids: Gauge duality and Newton-Cartan formulation

We present a theory of Galilean-invariant conventional and chiral $p_x \pm ip_y$ fermionic superfluids at zero temperature in two spatial dimensions in terms of a dual gauge theory. Our formulation is general coordinate invariant. The parity-violating effects are encoded in the Wen-Zee term that gives rise to the Hall viscosity and edge current. We show that the relativistic superfluid with the Euler current reduces to the chiral superfluid in the limit $c\to\infty$. Using Newton-Cartan geometry we construct the covariant formulation of the effective theory and calculate the energy current.

Topological invariant for the orbital spin of the electrons in the quantum Hall regime and Hall viscosity

Hall conductance of noninteracting fermions filling a certain number of Landau levels can be written as a topological invariant. A particular version of this invariant when expressed in terms of the single particle Green's functions directly generalizes to cases when interactions are present including those of fractional Hall states, although in those cases this invariant no longer corresponds to Hall conductance. We argue that when evaluated for both integer and fractional Hall states this invariant gives twice the total orbital spin of fermions which in turn is closely related to the Hall viscosity, a quantity characterizing the integer and fractional Hall states which recently received substantial attention in the literature.

Condensation of lattice defects and melting transitions in quantum Hall phases

Motivated by recent progress in understanding the interplay between lattice and electronic topological phases, we consider quantum-melting transitions of {\it weak} quantum liquid crystals, a crystal and a nematic phase, in which electrons form a quantum Hall state. In certain classes of Chern band insulators and quantum Hall phases, it has been previously demonstrated that there are topological Chern-Simons terms such as a Hall viscosity term and a gravitational Chern-Simons term for local lattice deformations. The Chern-Simons terms can induce anyonic statistics for the topological lattice defects and furthermore dress the defects with certain symmetry quantum numbers. On the other hand, the melting transitions of such liquid-crystalline orders are driven by the condensation of lattice defects. Based on these observations, we show how the topological terms can change the nature of the proximate disordered phases of the quantum liquid crystalline phases. We derive and study the effective dual field theories for the liquid crystalline phases with the geometric Chern-Simons terms, and carefully examine the symmetry quantum numbers and statistics of defects. We show that a crystal may go through a continuous phase transition into another crystal with the new discrete translational symmetries because the dislocation, the topological defect in the crystal, carries non-zero crystal momentum due to the Hall viscosity term. For the nematic phase, the disclination will condense at the phase transition to the isotropic phase, and we show that the isotropic phase may support a deconfined fractionally charged excitation due to the Wen-Zee term, and thus the isotropic phase and the nematic phase have different electromagnetic Hall responses.

Framing anomaly in the effective theory of the fractional quantum Hall effect.

We consider the geometric part of the effective action for the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE). It is shown that accounting for the framing anomaly of the quantum Chern-Simons theory is essential to obtain the correct gravitational linear response functions. In the lowest order in gradients, the linear response generating functional includes Chern-Simons, Wen-Zee, and gravitational Chern-Simons terms. The latter term has a contribution from the framing anomaly which fixes the value of thermal Hall conductivity and contributes to the Hall viscosity of the FQH states on a sphere. We also discuss the effects of the framing anomaly on linear responses for non-Abelian FQH states.

Hořava-Lifshitz gravity and effective theory of the fractional quantum Hall effect

We show that Horava-Lifshitz gravity theory can be employed as a covariant framework to build an effective field theory for the fractional quantum Hall effect that respects all the spacetime symmetries such as non-relativistic diffeomorphism invariance and anisotropic Weyl invariance as well as the gauge symmetry. The key to this formalism is a set of correspondence relations that maps all the field degrees of freedom in the Horava-Lifshitz gravity theory to external background (source) fields among others in the effective action of the quantum Hall effect, according to their symmetry transformation properties. We originally derive the map as a holographic dictionary, but its form is independent of the existence of holographic duality. This paves the way for the application of Horava-Lifshitz holography on fractional quantum Hall effect. Using the simplest holographic Chern-Simons model, we compute the low energy effective action at leading orders and show that it captures universal electromagnetic and geometric properties of quantum Hall states, including the Wen-Zee shift, Hall viscosity, angular momentum density and their relations. We identify the shift function in Horava-Lifshitz gravity theory as minus of guiding center velocity and conjugate to guiding center momentum. This enables us to distinguish guiding center angular momentum density from the internal one, which is the sum of Landau orbit spin and intrinsic (topological) spin of the composite particles. Our effective action shows that Hall viscosity is minus half of the internal angular momentum density and proportional to Wen-Zee shift, and Hall bulk viscosity is half of the guiding center angular momentum density.

Theory of Nematic Fractional Quantum Hall States

We derive an effective field theory for the isotropic-nematic quantum phase transition of fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states. We demonstrate that for a system with an isotropic background the low-energy effective theory of the nematic order parameter has $z=2$ dynamical scaling exponent, due to a Berry phase term of the order parameter, which is related to the non-dissipative Hall viscosity. Employing the composite fermion theory with a quadrupolar interaction between electrons, we show that a sufficiently attractive quadrupolar interaction triggers a phase transition from the isotropic FQH fluid into a nematic fractional quantum Hall phase. By investigating the spectrum of collective excitations, we demonstrate that the mass gap of Girvin-MacDonald-Platzman (GMP) mode collapses at the isotropic-nematic quantum phase transition. On the other hand, Laughlin quasiparticles and the Kohn collective mode remain gapped at this quantum phase transition, and Kohn's theorem is satisfied. The leading couplings between the nematic order parameter and the gauge fields include a term of the same form as Wen-Zee term. A disclination of the nematic order parameter carries an unquantized electric charge. We also discuss the relation between nematic degrees of freedom and the geometrical response of the fractional quantum Hall fluid.

Angular momentum generation from holographic Chern-Simons models

We study parity-violating effects, particularly the generation of angular momentum density and its relation to the parity-odd and dissipationless transport coefficient Hall viscosity, in strongly-coupled quantum fluid systems in 2+1 dimensions using holographic method. We employ a class of 3+1-dimensional holographic models of Einstein-Maxwell system with gauge and gravitational Chern-Simons terms coupled to a dynamical scalar field. The scalar can condensate and break the parity spontaneously. We find that when the scalar condensates, a non-vanishing angular momentum density and an associated edge current are generated, and they receive contributions from both gauge and gravitational Chern-Simons terms. The angular momentum density does not satisfy a membrane paradigm form because the vector mode fluctuations from which it is calculated are effectively massive. On the other hand, the emergence of Hall viscosity is a consequence of the gravitational Chern-Simons term alone and it has membrane paradigm form. We present both general analytic results and numeric results which take back-reactions into account. The ratio between Hall viscosity and angular momentum density resulting from the gravitational Chern-Simons term has in general a deviation from the universal 1/2 value obtained from field theory and condensed matter physics.

Effective field theory for fluids: Hall viscosity from a Wess-Zumino-Witten term

We propose an effective action that describe a relativistic fluid with Hall viscosity. The construction involves a Wess-Zumino-Witten term that exists only in (2+1) spacetime dimensions. We note that this formalism can accommodate only a Hall viscosity which is a homogeneous function of the entropy and particle number densities of degree one.

Hall viscosity and angular momentum in gapless holographic models

We use the holographic approach to compare the Hall viscosity $\eta_H$ and the angular momentum density ${\cal J}$ in gapless systems in $2+1$ dimensions at finite temperature. We start with a conformal fixed point and turn on a perturbation which breaks the parity and time reversal symmetries via gauge and gravitational Chern-Simons couplings in the bulk. While the ratio of $\eta_H$ and ${\cal J}$ shows some universal properties when the perturbation is slightly relevant, we find that the two quantities behave differently in general. In particular, $\eta_H$ depends only on infrared physics, while ${\cal J}$ receives contributions from degrees of freedom at all scales.

Bulk angular momentum and Hall viscosity in chiral superconductors

We establish the Berry-phase formulas for the angular momentum (AM) and the Hall viscosity (HV) to investigate chiral superconductors (SCs) in two and three dimensions. The AM is defined by the temporal integral of the anti-symmetric momentum current induced by an adiabatic deformation, while the HV is defined by the symmetric momentum current induced by the symmetric torsional electric field. Without suffering from the system size or geometry, we obtain the macroscopic AM $L_z = \hbar m N_0/2$ at zero temperature in full-gap chiral SCs, where $m$ is the magnetic quantum number and $N_0$ is the total number of electrons. We also find that the HV is equal to half the AM at zero temperature not only in full-gap chiral SCs as is well-known but also in nodal ones, but its behavior at finite temperature is different in the two cases.

Hall viscosity to entropy ratio in higher derivative theories

In this paper based on the basic principles of gauge/gravity duality we compute the hall viscosity to entropy ratio in the presence of various higher derivative corrections to the dual gravitational description embedded in an asymptotically $ AdS_{4} $ space time. As the first step of our analysis, considering the back reaction we impose higher derivative corrections to the abelian gauge sector of the theory where we notice that the ratio indeed gets corrected at the leading order in the coupling. Considering the probe limit as a special case we compute this leading order correction over the fixed background of the charged black brane solution. Finally we consider higher derivative ($ R^{2} $) correction to the gravity sector of the theory where we notice that the above ratio might get corrected at the sixth derivative level.

Odd parity transport in non-Abelian superfluids from symmetry locking

We consider relativistic non-Abelian superfluids, where the expectation value of the global symmetry currents relate space and internal indices, thus creating a “locked” phase. Locking a superfluid with SU(2) internal symmetry in 2+1 dimensions breaks parity spontaneously, and introduces parity-odd terms in the constitutive relations. We show that there are qualitatively different extensions of the rest frame locking to non-zero velocities. We construct the resulting superfluid hydrodynamics up to the first derivative order. Using an expansion close to the critical point, we estimate the ratio of the Hall viscosity and the angular momentum density. Our general hydrodynamic results are compatible with the holographic p-wave calculations in arXiv:1311.4882.

Ward identities for Hall transport

We derive quantum field theory Ward identities based on linear area preserving and conformal transformations in 2+1 dimensions. The identities relate Hall viscosities, Hall conductivities and the angular momentum. They apply both for relativistic and non relativistic systems, at zero and at finite temperature. We consider systems with or without translation invariance, and introduce an external magnetic field and viscous drag terms. A special case of the identities yields the well known relation between the Hall conductivity and half the angular momentum density.