Measurement of diffusion thermopower in the quantum Hall systems

We have measured diffusion thermopower in a two-dimensional electron gas at low temperature ($T$=40 mK) in the field range 0 $<B<$ 3.4 T, by employing the current heating technique. A Hall bar device is designed for this purpose, which contains two crossing Hall bars, one for the measurement and the other used as a heater, and is equipped with a metallic front gate to control the resistivity of the areas to be heated. In the low magnetic field regime ($B\leq$ 1 T), we obtain the transverse thermopower $S_{yx}$ that quantitatively agrees with the $S_{yx}$ calculated from resistivities using the generalized Mott formula. In the quantum Hall regime ($B\geq$ 1T), we find that $S_{yx}$ signal appears only when both the measured and the heater area are in the resistive (inter-quantum Hall transition) region. Anomalous gate-voltage dependence is observed above $\sim$1.8 T, where spin-splitting in the measured area becomes apparent.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, EP2DS-1

Phase behaviour of a model of colloidal particles with a fluctuating internal state

Colloidal particles are not simple rigid particles, in general an isolated particle is a system with many degrees of freedom in its own right, e.g., the counterions around a charged colloidal particle.The behaviour of model colloidal particles, with a simple phenomenological model to account for these degrees of freedom, is studied. It is found that the interaction between the particles is not pairwise additive. It is even possible that the interaction between a triplet of particles is attractive while the pair interaction is repulsive. When this is so the liquid phase is either stable only in a small region of the phase diagram or absent altogether.Comment: 12 pages including 4 figure