Quantum Spin Hall Effect

B. Andrei Bernevig and Shou-Cheng Zhang
Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 106802 – Published 14 March 2006

Abstract

The quantum Hall liquid is a novel state of matter with profound emergent properties such as fractional charge and statistics. The existence of the quantum Hall effect requires breaking of the time reversal symmetry caused by an external magnetic field. In this work, we predict a quantized spin Hall effect in the absence of any magnetic field, where the intrinsic spin Hall conductance is quantized in units of 2e4π. The degenerate quantum Landau levels are created by the spin-orbit coupling in conventional semiconductors in the presence of a strain gradient. This new state of matter has many profound correlated properties described by a topological field theory.

  • Figure
  • Received 18 April 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.106802

©2006 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

B. Andrei Bernevig and Shou-Cheng Zhang

  • Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA

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Issue

Vol. 96, Iss. 10 — 17 March 2006

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