The Interrelation between Incompressible Strips and Quantized Hall Plateaus

We study the current and charge distribution of a two dimensional electron gas under strong perpendicular magnetic fields within the linear response regime. We show within a self-consistent screening theory that incompressible strips with integer values of local Landau-level filling factor exist for finite intervals of the magnetic field strength $B$. Within an essentially local conductivity model, we find that the current density in these $B$ intervals is confined to the incompressible strips of vanishing local longitudinal resistivity. This leads to vanishing longitudinal and exactly quantized Hall resistance, and to a nice agreement of the calculated Hall potential profiles with the measured ones.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

The Hofstadter Energy Spectrum for an Interacting 2DEG

We study the effects of the Coulomb interactions between electrons on the Hofstadter butterfly, which characterizes the subband structure of the Landau levels of a two-dimensional electron gas in a perpendicular homogeneous magnetic field and a periodic lateral superlattice potential. The interactions essentially preserve the intricate gap structure of the Hofstadter spectra, but with a lower symmetry that depends on the filling of the Landau bands. For short enough periods and strong enough modulation the miniband structure can be resolved in the thermodynamic density of states.Comment: LaTeX 4 pages with 3 PostScript figures, Contribution to EP2DSXI Nottingham August 95 to appear in Surface Scienc

Range-Dependent Disorder Effects on the Plateau-Widths Calculated within the Screening Theory of the Iqhe

We summarize the screening theory of the integer quantized Hall effect (IQHE) and emphasize its two key mechanisms: first, the existence, in certain magnetic field intervals, of incompressible strips, with integer values of the local filling factor and quantized values of longitudinal and Hall resistivity, and second, the confinement of an imposed dissipative current to these strips, leading to the quantization of the global resistances. We demonstrate that, without any localization assumption, this theory explains the enormous experimental reproducibility of the quantized resistance values, as well as experimental results on the potential distribution in narrow Hall bars. We further demonstrate that inclusion of long-range potential fluctuations allows to apply the theory to wider Hall bars, and can lead to a broadening of the quantum Hall plateaus, whereas short-range disorder tends to narrow the plateaus.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, paper of the invited talk at Semi-Mag 17, Wuerzburg, German

Guiding center picture of magnetoresistance oscillations in rectangular superlattices

We calculate the magneto-resistivities of a two-dimensional electron gas subjected to a lateral superlattice (LSL) of rectangular symmetry within the guiding-center picture, which approximates the classical electron motion as a rapid cyclotron motion around a slowly drifting guiding center. We explicitly evaluate the velocity auto-correlation function along the trajectories of the guiding centers, which are equipotentials of a magnetic-field dependent effective LSL potential. The existence of closed equipotentials may lead to a suppression of the commensurability oscillations, if the mean free path and the LSL modulation potential are large enough. We present numerical and analytical results for this suppression, which allow, in contrast to previous quantum arguments, a classical explanation of similar suppression effects observed experimentally on square-symmetric LSL. Furthermore, for rectangular LSLs of lower symmetry they lead us to predict a strongly anisotropic resistance tensor, with high- and low-resistance directions which can be interchanged by tuning the externally applied magnetic field.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure

Magnetoresistance oscillations of two-dimensional electron systems in lateral superlattices with structured unit cells

AbstractModel calculations for commensurability oscillations of the low-field magnetoresistance of two-dimensional electron systems (2DES) in lateral superlattices, consisting of unit cells with an internal structure, are compared with recent experiments. The relevant harmonics of the effective modulation potential depend not only on the geometrical structure of the modulated unit cell, but also strongly on the nature of the modulation. While higher harmonics of an electrostatically generated surface modulation are exponentially damped at the position of the 2DES about 90nm below the surface, no such damping appears for strain-induced modulation generated, e.g., by the deposition of stripes of calixarene resist on the surface before cooling down the sample