Study of Scaling in the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect

Abstract

In the composite fermion model of the fractional quantum Hall effect, composite fermions experience, in addition to the usual potential disorder, also a magnetic flux disorder. Motivated by this, we investigate the localization properties of a single fermion in two dimensions, moving in the presence of both potential and magnetic flux disorders, but with a non-zero average magnetic field. It is found that the exponent characterizing the divergence of the localization length is not changed upon the addition of the flux disorder, provided it is not too large, suggesting that the transitions between fractionally quantized Hall plateaus belong to the same universality class as those between the integrally quantized ones.