Understanding the Quantum Hall Effect
Evert Jan Post
Keywords: Copenhagen, ensemble, epistemology, experimentum crucis, period integral, quantum Hall effect, integer and fractional effects
A survey is presented of work that has preceded and followed the discovery of the quantum Hall effect (QHE). The inability of standard methods to cope with cooperative order is cited as a major cause of limitations. Difficulties manifest themselves especially for the fractional QHE. There is a tenuous applicability of Schr?dinger methods to highly ordered ensembles of systems. The latter are more appropriately described by methods predating modern quantum mechanics. Their mutual asymptotics is physical in origin and not to be regarded as an indication that one would be more exact than the other. Two totally independent, yet mutually supportive, methods describing integer and fractional QHE are presented as evidence to substantiate the need for a departure from the Schr?dinger method and its Copenhagen interpretation.
