The quantum Hall effect (or integer quantum Hall effect) is a quantum-mechanical version of the Hall effect, observed in two-dimensional electron systems subjected to low temperatures and strong magnetic fields, in which the Hall conductance σ undergoes quantum Hall transitions to take on the quantized values
where is the channel current, is the Hall voltage, e is the elementary charge and h is Planck's constant. The prefactor: is known as the "filling factor", and can take on either integer ( = 1, 2, 3, ...) or fractional ( = 1/3, 2/5, 3/7, 2/3, 3/5, 1/5, 2/9, 3/13, 5/2, 12/5, ...) values. The quantum Hall effect is referred to as the integer or fractional quantum Hall effect depending on whether is an integer or fraction, respectively.