Electrostatics-induced breakdown of the integer quantum Hall effect in cavity QED
JEIP, UAR 3573 CNRS, College de France, PSL Research University（法国学院）；SISSA-International School for Advances Studies（国际高等研究学院）；ICTP-The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics（阿卜杜斯·萨拉姆国际理论物理中心）；Universite Paris-Saclay（巴黎萨克雷大学）；Walther-Meißner-Institut, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften（巴伐利亚科学院瓦尔特·迈斯纳研究所）；Technische Universität München（慕尼黑工业大学）；Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST)（慕尼黑量子科学与技术中心）；Istituto Nazionale di Ottica (CNR-INO)（意大利国家光学研究所）；European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy (LENS)（欧洲非线性光谱学实验室）
Gian Marcello Andolina, Zeno Bacciconi, Alberto Nardin, Marco Schirò, Peter Rabl, Daniele De Bernardis
We address the prevailing theoretical explanation of the recently observed breakdown of the integer quantum Hall effect in a two-dimensional electron gas embedded in a metallic split-ring resonator. Within the same single-particle description of quantized Hall conductance, we compare previously proposed vacuum-induced transport modifications against an alternative mechanism that explains this breakdown in terms of non-chiral edge channels arising solely from electrostatic boundary effects. This direct comparison shows that for experimentally relevant parameters, the electrostatic contribution exceeds that of any vacuum-induced conductance modifications by many orders of magnitude and yields characteristic transport signatures and energy scales that align well with experimental observations. This finding sheds new light on this puzzling phenomenon, supporting an electrostatic rather than a vacuum-related interpretation that can be directly tested in experiments.
