Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2014) 129: 100
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2014-14100-9

Regular Article

Landau levels, self-adjoint extensions and Hall conductivity on a cone

¹ Unidade Acadêmica de Física, Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, POB 10071, 58109-970, Campina Grande, Brazil
² Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Caixa Postal 5008, PB 58.051-900, João Pessoa, Brazil

^* e-mail: cleversonfilgueiras@yahoo.com.br

Received: 14 February 2014
Revised: 7 April 2014
Accepted: 12 April 2014
Published online: 29 May 2014

Abstract

In this work we obtain the Landau levels and the Hall conductivity at zero temperature of a two-dimensional electron gas on a conical surface. We investigate the integer quantum Hall effect considering two different approaches. The first one is an extrinsic approach which employs an effective scalar potential that contains both the Gaussian and the mean curvature of the surface. The second one, an intrinsic approach where the Gaussian curvature is the sole term in the scalar curvature potential. From a theoretical point of view, the singular Gaussian curvature of the cone may affect the wave functions and the respective Landau levels. Since this problem requests self-adjoint extensions, we investigate how the conical tip could influence the integer quantum Hall effect, comparing with the case were the coupling between the wave functions and the conical tip is ignored. This last case corresponds to the so-called Friedrichs extension. In all cases, the Hall conductivity is enhanced by the conical geometry depending on the opening angle. There are a considerable number of theoretical papers concerned with the self-adjoint extensions on a cone and now we hope the work addressed here inspires experimental investigation on these questions about quantum dynamics on a cone.