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Is the quantum Hall effect influenced by the gravitational field?
Friedrich W Hehl1, Yuri N Obukhov, Bernd Rosenow
1Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln, 50923 Köln, Germany. hehl@thp.uni-koeln.de
Abstract:
Most of the experiments on the quantum Hall effect (QHE) were made at approximately the same height above sea level. A future international comparison will determine whether the gravitational field g(x) influences the QHE. In the realm of (1+2)-dimensional phenomenological macroscopic electrodynamics, the Ohm-Hall law is metric independent ("topological"). This suggests that it does not couple to g(x). We corroborate this result by a microscopic calculation of the Hall conductance in the presence of a post-Newtonian gravitational field.
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