End states, ladder compounds, and domain wall fermions

Abstract

A magnetic field applied to a cross linked ladder compound can generate isolated electronic states bound to the ends of the chain. After exploring the interference phenomena responsible, I discuss a connection to the domain wall approach to chiral fermions in lattice gauge theory. The robust nature of the states under small variations of the bond strengths is tied to chiral symmetry and the multiplicative renormalization of fermion masses.

Comments: 10 pages, 4 figures; final version for Phys. Rev. Lett