Disordered quantum smectics

E. Orignac; R. Chitra

doi:doi:10.1209/epl/i2003-00535-4

DOI: 10.1209/epl/i2003-00535-4
Europhys. Lett., 63 (3) , pp. 440-445 (2003)

Disordered quantum smectics

E. Orignac¹ and R. Chitra²

¹ Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de l'École Normale Supérieure CNRS-UMR8549 24 Rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France
² Laboratoire de Physique Théorique des Liquides CNRS-UMR7600 Université Pierre et Marie Curie - 4 Place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France

(Received 4 December 2002; accepted in final form 28 May 2003)

Abstract
We study the impurity pinning of the Quantum Hall (QH) smectic state arising in two-dimensional electron systems in high Landau levels. We use replicas and a Gaussian Variational method to deal with the disorder. The pinned quantum smectic exhibits very anisotropic behaviour, with width correlations along the stripes manifesting a power law behavior. We calculate the dynamical conductivity $\sigma_{xx} (\bm{q},\omega)$ along the stripe direction and find a q-dependent pinning peak.

PACS
73.43.Cd - Quantum Hall effects: Theory and modeling.
83.80.Xz - Liquid crystals: nematic, cholesteric, smectic, discotic, etc.

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