1. Nuclear Theory/RIKEN seminar

    "Generalized Landau-level representation for spin-1/2 fermions and its applications"

    Presented by Igor Shovkovy, Arizona State University

    Friday, July 31, 2015, 2 pm
    Small Seminar Room, Bldg. 510

    Hosted by: Soeren Schlichting

    I will discuss the recently proposed generalized Landau-level representation for charged fermions in an external magnetic field. After demonstrating its key advantages over the other existing representations, I will mention several of its applications. One of them is the quantum Hall effect in graphene, where the new representation is essential for a sufficiently detailed theoretical description, in which all the dynamical parameters are running functions of the Landau-level index. The other application is the chiral asymmetry induced in dense relativistic matter in an external magnetic field. The quantitative measure of such an asymmetry is the chiral shift parameter that measures a relative shift of the longitudinal momenta (along the direction of the magnetic field) in the dispersion relations of opposite chirality fermions. Using the language of solid state physics, the corresponding ground state of dense relativistic matter could be interpreted as a Weyl metal state. Incidentally, the exact same mechanism also works in real Dirac metals.