Abstract
We report on a study of the charged-Skyrmion or spin-texture excitations which occur in quantum Hall ferromagnets near odd Landau-level filling factors. Particle-hole symmetry is used to relate the spin-quantum numbers of charged particle and hole excitations and neutral particle-hole pair excitations. Hartree-Fock theory is used to provide quantitative estimates of the energies of these excitations and their dependence on Zeeman coupling strength, Landau-level quantum numbers, and the thicknesses of the two-dimensional electron layers. For the case of ν near three we suggest the possibility of first-order phase transitions with increasing Zeeman coupling strength from a many-Skyrmion state to one with many maximally spin-polarized quasiparticles.
- Received 23 December 1996
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.55.10671
©1997 American Physical Society