Nonohmic conductivity as a probe of crossover from diffusion to hopping in two dimensions

We show that the study of conductivity nonlinearity gives a possibility to determine the condition when the diffusion conductivity changes to the hopping one with increasing disorder. It is experimentally shown that the conductivity of single quantum well GaAs/InGaAs/GaAs heterostructures behaves like diffusive one down to value of order $10^{-2}e^2/h$.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Experimental study of weak antilocalization effect in a high mobility InGaAs/InP quantum well

The magnetoresistance associated with quantum interference corrections in a high mobility, gated InGaAs/InP quantum well structure is studied as a function of temperature, gate voltage, and angle of the tilted magnetic field. Particular attention is paid to the experimental extraction of phase-breaking and spin-orbit scattering times when weak anti- localization effects are prominent. Compared with metals and low mobility semiconductors the characteristic magnetic field $B_{tr} = \hbar/4eD \tau$ in high mobility samples is very small and the experimental dependencies of the interference effects extend to fields several hundreds of times larger. Fitting experimental results under these conditions therefore requires theories valid for arbitrary magnetic field. It was found, however, that such a theory was unable to fit the experimental data without introducing an extra, empirical, scale factor of about 2. Measurements in tilted magnetic fields and as a function of temperature established that both the weak localization and the weak anti-localization effects have the same, orbital origin. Fits to the data confirmed that the width of the low field feature, whether a weak localization or a weak anti-localization peak, is determined by the phase-breaking time and also established that the universal (negative) magnetoresistance observed in the high field limit is associated with a temperature independent spin-orbit scattering time.Comment: 13 pages including 10 figure

New narrow-beam neutron spectrometer in complex monitoring system

In the interaction of cosmic rays (CRs) with Earth’s atmosphere, neutrons are formed in a wide range of energies: from thermal (E≈0.025 eV) to ultrarelativistic (E>1 GeV). To detect and study CRs, Polar Geophysical Institute (PGI) uses a complex monitoring system containing detectors of various configurations. The standard neutron monitor (NM) 18-NM-64 is sensitive to neutrons with energies E>50 MeV. The lead-free section of the neutron monitor (BSRM) detects neutrons with energies E≈(0.1÷1) MeV. Also, for sharing with standard detectors, the Apatity NM station has developed and installed a neutron spectrometer with three energy channels and a particle reception angle of 15 degrees. The configuration of the device makes it possible to study the degree of anisotropy of the particle flux from different directions. We have obtained characteristics of the detector (response function and particle reception angle), as well as geometric dimensions through numerical simulation using the GEANT4 toolkit [Agostinelli et al., 2003]. During operation of the device, we collected database of observations and received preliminary results

Nature of gamma radiation variations during atmospheric precipitation

The Polar Geophysical Institute has developed a complex facility for continuously monitoring various components of secondary cosmic rays. Gamma radiation during precipitation events has been found to increase the year round regardless of the season. A series of experiments has revealed that there is no precipitation pollution by any natural or artificial radionuclides. Radiation spectrum does not have any characteristic lines of elements. We propose a mechanism providing a satisfactory description for this phenomenon