solitons in quantum Hall systems

We present here an elementary pedagogical introduction to CP_N solitons in quantum Hall systems. We begin with a brief introduction to both CP_N models and to quantum Hall (QH) physics. We then focus on spin and layer-spin degrees of freedom in QH systems and point out that these are in fact CP_N fields for N = 1 and N = 3. Excitations in these degrees of freedom will be shown to be topologically non-trivial soliton solutions of the corresponding CP_N field equations. We conclude with a brief summary of our own recent work in this area, done with Sankalpa Ghosh. Received 17 November 2001 Published online 2 October 2002 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: doug0700@mail.jnu.ac.in