Compressible Strips, Chiral Luttinger Liquids and All That Jazz

Abstract

When the quantum Hall effect occurs in a two-dimensional electron gas, all low-energy elementary excitations are localized near the system edge. The edge acts in many ways like a one-dimensional ring of electrons, except that a finite current flows around the ring in equilibrium. This article is a brief and informal review of some of the physics of quantum Hall system edges. We discuss the implications of macroscopic {\em compressible strip} models for microscopic {chiral Luttinger liquid} models and make an important distinction between the origin of non-Fermi-liquid behavior in fractional quantum Hall edges and in usual one-dimensional electron gas systems.