Guiding center quantization of a quantum Hall analog of Hawking radiation

Abstract

We revisit the quantum Hall analog of Hawking radiation in which a Fermi sea of electrons occupying half of a plane, subjected to a quadrupolar electric potential, gives rise to analog Hawking radiation of chiral edge modes. We show that the phenomenon is accurately captured by quantization of the classical guiding center theory, where the gyroscopic motion of the electrons is coarse grained and only the drift motion is resolved. The quantum dynamics takes place on a non-commutative plane, which requires an electron localized in the half-plane to be supported everywhere along the edge direction. This kinematical constraint on the quantum state leads directly to the radiation, which propagates in both directions away from the origin along the edge. The radiation is thermal with respect to laboratory time, which is equal (up to a constant factor) to the boost angle in the analog Minkowski spacetime in which the chiral edge modes propagate, so in fact it corresponds to analog Unruh radiation.