Magnetic flux of `vortices' on the two-dimensional Hall surface [and reply]

Friedman et al. (see ibid, vol.52, p.1587 (1984)) proposed a model for the QHE involving the flow of charged vortices which carried a magnetic flux due to the Hall current generated by the electric field of the charge e*. They treated the electromagnetic fields as two dimensional i.e. confined to the Hall surface. Haldane and Chen used a three-dimensional treatment of the fields. They found negligible screening of e* in contrast to the complete screening found by Friedman et al. They found that charged defects on the Hall surface carry a small nonintegral material-dependent flux. Friedman et al. responded that in the model used by Haldane and Chen angular momentum was not quantised in the usual units and thus the spin-statistics theorem did not hold. They note that there cannot be an unscreened charge e* as this would lead to an infinite magnetic moment

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Author Morton Friedman Biomedical Engineering