12.

3 Integer Quantum Hall Effect 697

Actually, this is not quite true because there is a subtle change

accompanying the gauge transformation. Let us consider free electrons,
and a filled Landau level. The gauge transformation (for n = 1) of a
Landau state with momentum px shifts px according to

Px - Px + -
4 0
CLX
(12.83)

or equivalently, the center-of-orbit coordinate yo is shifted by

$0
YO-YO+-. (12.84)
HLX
It is easy to check that the increment of 90 is just the y-spacing between
the centres of adjacent Landau states. Hence the filled Landau level is
transformed into itself: each electron is transferred to the next Landau
state. There are only two places where something strange happens: at
one edge of the system, a state becomes empty; and at the other edge,
an electron seems to get pushed out of the sample. In fact, what must
happen is that the electron gets transferred (say, via a connecting wire,
or along an edge channel13) to the other edge.
To summarize: for a filled Landau level of free electrons, the gauge
transformation which adds a flux quantum 40 to &ux, is leaving the
state of the system unaltered, except for the transfer of a single electron
from one edge to the other.
The gauge argument [234] relies on the assumption that the same
is true whenever there is a plateau in the Hall conductivity: adding 40
to the only change in the state of the system is the transfer of a
number of electrons from one edge to the other.
First, let us see what the argument is leading to. We will try to
justify the starting assumption afterwards.
We know from classical electrodynamics that the vector potential
-
enters the energy density in the form (l/c)j A. The energy increment
I3Though the bulk of the system is often gapped due to kinetic energy quantization
(Landau levels), or due to electron-electron interaction (see later), we always find
gapless excitations at the perimeter of the system. This is quite easy to accept for
the symmetrical gauge where the edge of the system is where we stopped putting in
more electrons.