Friday, July 22, 2016

condensed matter - Transition between 2D and 3D quantum systems


Quantum Hall effect and anyonic particles are examples that occur in a two-dimensional system. However, experiments for such systems can only be realized in a pseudo-2D environment, where the third spatial dimension is much smaller than the other two dimensions. How do we expect the results from such experiments to differ from a true 2D system? In particular, how/when does an anyon begin or cease to exist when we transit between a 2D and 3D system?



Answer



The results from the experiment does not differ significantly from the "true 2D" system, in fact, this is why experiments and theory agree so well!



Consider a semiconductor heterostructure GaAs/GaAsAl. At the interface, alignement of the Fermi level at both sides of the semiconductor crystals creates a triangular potential well at the GaAs side of the interface. This potential well is quite narrow so that quantization in one direction can be effectively assumed. In fact, putting numbers for GaAs, m=0.067me, n2D1015m2, ϵ=13ϵ0 you get that the typical quantization energy is ΔE20meV.


Due to the triangular well, the 3D electron wavefunction [consider nearly-free electrons in the effective mass approximation] is modified as


Ψkx,ky,nσ(r)=1A1/2eikxxeikyyζn(z)χσ


with ζn(z) the n-th eigenfunction of the triangular well with energy εzn. THe total energy can be written as


εkx,ky,n=22m(k2x+k2y)+εzn


The Fermi energy can be obtained using that k2F=2πn, εF10 meV.


The difference between the highest occupied energy is ΔEεF10 meV. This yields T100 K.


Conclusion A quick conclusion of this calculation is the following: at temperatures T100K all the occupied electron states have the same orbital in the z direction and promotion to other orbital requires an excitation energy of at least 10 meV. If this is not provided, the system has indeed lost one degree of freedom and it is dynamically a true 2D system. Thus 2D systems can exist in Nature!


Concerning the second question, anyon statistics exists only in two-dimensional systems. It cannot exist in 3D, and the reason is topological: in two dimensions the configuration space of N particles is multiple connected and closed path of a particle which encloses another particle cannot be "shrinked" to a point [mathematically this is called "compatification"]. On the other hand, for higher dimensions, the configuration space is simply connected and we lose the possibility of distinguish between the interior and the exterior of a closed path.Hence, in the transition from 2D to 3D you simply lose the possibility of interpolate between Bose and Fermi statistics.


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