Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2019/ii/paper-1/34b/a/solution

Choose the Landau gauge
It preserves translation invariance in the -direction, so is conserved. With , magnetic minimal coupling gives
where
This is a quantum harmonic oscillator, so the Landau levels are
independent of .
The periodic boundary condition in quantizes . Requiring the guiding centre to lie in a strip of width gives a -interval of width . The number of allowed integers is therefore approximately
the degeneracy of a Landau level, up to boundary corrections.

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