Chiral Anomaly and Effective Field Theory for the Quantum Hall Liquid with Edges

Abstract

Under general assumptions, we present a low-energy effective action for the quantum Hall state when edges exist. It is shown that the chiral edge current is necessary to make the effective action to be gauge invariant. However the chiral edge current is irrelevant to the Hall current. The exactly quantized value of $\sigma_{xy}$ is observed only when the Hall current does not flow at the edge region. Our effective theory is applicable to the quantum Hall liquid on a surface with non-trivial topology and physical meanings of the topology are discussed.