Anomalous resistance overshoot in the integer quantum Hall effect

In this work we report experiments on defined by shallow etching narrow Hall bars. The magneto-transport properties of intermediate mobility two-dimensional electron systems are investigated and analyzed within the screening theory of the integer quantized Hall effect. We observe a non-monotonic increase of Hall resistance at the low magnetic field ends of the quantized plateaus, known as the overshoot effect. Unexpectedly, for Hall bars that are defined by shallow chemical etching the overshoot effect becomes more pronounced at elevated temperatures. We observe the overshoot effect at odd and even integer plateaus, which favor a spin independent explanation, in contrast to discussion in the literature. In a second set of the experiments, we investigate the overshoot effect in gate defined Hall bar and explicitly show that the amplitude of the overshoot effect can be directly controlled by gate voltages. We offer a comprehensive explanation based on scattering between evanescent incompressible channels.Comment: 7 pages and 5 figure

I-V characterization of a staircase quantum well infrared photodetector

In this work, a quantum well infrared photodetector structure which consists of three different well thicknesses with three different barrier compositions producing a staircase-like conduction band profile with the reputation of 30 periods has been investigated. Dark current measurements have been done at the range from 6 K to 290 K temperature. Activation energies of the carriers have been obtained from the temperature dependence of the I-V measurements. The change of the activation energy with bias voltage has also been obtained. From the activation energy at zero bias and calculated quasi Fermi energy, barrier heights of the quantum wells and ground state energies were obtained. All obtained ground state energies have been found to be consistent with the results obtained from calculations with the transfer matrix method. (C) 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinhei

The local nature of incompressibility of quantum Hall effect

Since the experimental realization of the integer quantum Hall effect in a two-dimensional electron system, the interrelation between the conductance quantization and the topological properties of the system has been investigated. Assuming that the two-dimensional electron system is described by a Bloch Hamiltonian, system is insulating in the bulk of sample throughout the quantum Hall plateau due to a magnetic field induced energy gap. Meanwhile, the system is conducting at the edges resembling a 2+1 dimensional topological insulator without time-reversal symmetry. Here, by our magneto-transport measurements performed on GaAs/AlGaAs high purity Hall bars with two inner contacts we show that incompressible strips formed at the edges result in Hall quantization, even if the bulk is compressible. Consequently, the relationship between the quantum Hall effect and topological bulk insulator breaks for specific field intervals within the plateaus. The measurement of conducting bulk, strongly challenges all existing single-particle theories

Anomalous resistance overshoot in the integer quantum Hall effect

In this work we report on experiments performed on smooth edge-narrow Hall bars. The magneto-transport properties of intermediate mobility two-dimensional electron systems are investigated and analyzed within the screening theory of the integer quantized Hall effect. We observe a non-monotonic increase of Hall resistance at the low magnetic field ends of the quantized plateaus, known as the overshoot effect. Unexpectedly, for Hall bars that are defined by shallow chemical etching the overshoot effect becomes more pronounced at elevated temperatures. We observe the overshoot effect at odd and even integer plateaus, which favor a spin independent explanation, in contrast to discussion in the literature. In a second set of the experiments, we investigate the overshoot effect in gate defined Hall bar and explicitly show that the amplitude of the overshoot effect can be directly controlled by gate voltages. We offer a comprehensive explanation based on scattering between evanescent incompressible channels