W-infinity Field Theories for the Edge Excitations in the Quantum Hall Effect

We briefly review these low-energy effective theories for the quantum Hall effect, with emphasis and language familiar to field theorists. Two models have been proposed for describing the most stable Hall plateaus (the Jain series): the multi-component Abelian theories and the minimal W-infinity models. They both lead to a-priori classifications of quantum Hall universality classes. Some experiments already confirmed the basic predictions common to both effective theories, while other experiments will soon pin down their detailed properties and differences. Based on the study of partition functions, we show that the Abelian theories are rational conformal field theories while the minimal W-infinity models are not.