Quantum spin hall effect

B. Andrei Bernevig, Shou Cheng Zhang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1595 Scopus citations

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.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number106802
JournalPhysical review letters
Volume96
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - 2006
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Physics and Astronomy(all)

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