Quantum-Hall to insulator transition

Abstract

The crossover from the quantum Hall regime to the Hall-insulator is investigated by varying the strength of the diagonal disorder in a 2d tight-binding model. The Hall and longitudinal conductivities and the behavior of the critical states are calculated numerically. We find that with increasing disorder the current carrying states close to the band center disappear first. Simultaneously, the quantized Hall conductivity drops monotonically to zero also from higher quantized values.