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phase coherence characteristic of a microscopic object ics not covered here may be found in Refs.9,10,11 , as well
can be maintained at low temperatures (below 1 K) over as in recent conference proceedings.12,13,14,15,16,17
distances of several microns, which one would otherwise We have attempted to give a comprehensive list of
have classified as macroscopic. The physics of these sys- references to theoretical and experimental work on the
tems has been referred to as mesoscopic,1 a word bor- subjects of this review. We apologize to those whose
rowed from statistical mechanics.2 Elastic impurity scat- contributions we have overlooked. Certain experiments
tering does not destroy phase coherence, which is why are discussed in some detail. In selecting these experi-
the effects of quantum interference can modify the con- ments, our aim has been to choose those that illustrate
ductivity of a disordered conductor. This is the regime a particular phenomenon in the clearest fashion, not to
of diffusive transport, characteristic for disordered met- establish priorities. We thank the authors and publishers
als. Quantum interference becomes more important as for their kind permission to reproduce figures from the
the dimensionality of the conductor is reduced. Quasi- original publications. Much of the work reviewed here
one dimensionality can readily be achieved in a 2DEG by was a joint effort with colleagues at the Delft University
lateral confinement. of Technology and at the Philips Research Laboratories,
Semiconductor nanostructures are unique in offering and we are grateful for the stimulating collaboration.
the possibility of studying quantum transport in an arti- The study of quantum transport in semiconductor
ficial potential landscape. This is the regime of ballistic nanostructures is motivated by more than scientific inter-
transport, in which scattering with impurities can be ne- est. The fabrication of nanostructures relies on sophis-
glected. The transport properties can then be tailored by ticated crystal growth and lithographic techniques that
varying the geometry of the conductor, in much the same exist because of the industrial effort toward the minia-
way as one would tailor the transmission properties of a turization of transistors. Conventional transistors oper-
waveguide. The physics of this transport regime could be ate in the regime of classical diffusive transport, which
called electron optics in the solid state.3 The formal rela- breaks down on short length scales. The discovery of
tion between conduction and transmission, known as the novel transport regimes in semiconductor nanostructures
Landauer formula,1,4,5 has demonstrated its real power provides options for the development of innovative fu-
in this context. For example, the quantization of the con- ture devices. At this point, most of the proposals in
ductance of a quantum point contact6,7 (a short and nar- the literature for a quantum interference device have
row constriction in the 2DEG) can be understood using been presented primarily as interesting possibilities, and
the Landauer formula as resulting from the discreteness they have not yet been critically analyzed. A quanti-
of the number of propagating modes in a waveguide. tative comparison with conventional transistors will be
Two-dimensional systems in a perpendicular magnetic needed, taking circuit design and technological consider-
field have the remarkable property of a quantized Hall ations into account.18 Some proposals are very ambitious,
resistance,8 which results from the quantization of the in that they do not only consider a different principle of
energy in a series of Landau levels. The magnetic length operation for a single transistor, but envision entire com-
(h/eB)1/2 ( 10 nm at B = 5 T) assumes the role of the puter architectures in which arrays of quantum devices
wavelength in the quantum Hall effect. The potential operate phase coherently.19
landscape in a 2DEG can be adjusted to be smooth on We hope that the present review will convey some of
the scale of the magnetic length, so that inter-Landau the excitement that the workers in this rewarding field of
level scattering is suppressed. One then enters the regime research have experienced in its exploration. May the de-
of adiabatic transport. In this regime truly macroscopic scription of the variety of phenomena known at present,
behavior may not be found even in samples as large as and of the simplest way in which they can be understood,
0.25 mm. form an inspiration for future investigations.
In this review we present a self-contained account of
these three novel transport regimes in semiconductor
nanostructures. The experimental and theoretical de- B. Nanostructures in Si inversion layers
velopments in this field have developed hand in hand, a
fruitful balance that we have tried to maintain here as Electronic properties of the two-dimensional electron
well. We have opted for the simplest possible theoretical gas in Si MOSFETs (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-
explanations, avoiding the powerful but more formal effect transistors) have been reviewed by Ando, Fowler,
Greens function techniques. If in some instances this and Stern,20 while general technological and device as-
choice has not enabled us to do full justice to a subject, pects are covered in detail in the books by Sze21 and by
then we hope that this disadvantage is compensated by Nicollian and Brew.22 In this section we only summarize
a gain in accessibility. Lack of space and time has caused those properties that are needed in the following. A typ-
us to limit the scope of this review to metallic transport ical device consists of a p-type Si substrate, covered by a
in the plane of a 2DEG at small currents and voltages. Si02 layer that serves as an insulator between the (100)
Transport in the regime of strong localization is excluded, Si surface and a metallic gate electrode. By application
as well as that in the regime of a nonlinear current- of a sufficiently strong positive voltage Vg on the gate, a
voltage dependence. Overviews of these, and other, top- 2DEG is induced electrostatically in the p-type Si under
3
TABLE I Electronic properties of the 2DEG in GaAs-AlGaAs heterostructures and Si inversion layers.
localized regime32,35,36,37 (which is not discussed in this tial induced by the narrow gate, we refer to the work
review). Perhaps the technique is particularly suited to by Laux and Stern.42 This is a complicated problem,
this highly resistive regime, since a tail of the diffusion which requires a self-consistent solution of the Poisson
profile inevitably extends into the channel, providing ad- and Schrodinger equations, and must be solved numeri-
ditional scattering centers.34 Some studies in the weak cally.
localization regime have also been reported.33
The narrow gate technique has been modified by War-
The conceptually simplest approach (Fig. 2b) to define ren et al.43,44 (Fig. 2c), who covered a multiple narrow-
a narrow channel is to scale down the width of the gate by gate structure with a second dielectric followed by a sec-
means of electron beam lithography38 or other advanced ond gate covering the entire device. (This structure was
techniques.39,40,41 A difficulty for the characterization of specifically intended to study one-dimensional superlat-
the device is that fringing fields beyond the gate induce tice effects, which is why multiple narrow gates were
a considerable uncertainty in the channel width, as well used.) By separately varying the voltages on the two
as its density. Such a problem is shared to some degree gates, one achieves an increased control over channel
by all approaches, however, and this technique has been width and density. The electrostatics of this particu-
quite successful (as we will discuss in Section II). For lar structure has been studied in Ref.43 in a semiclassical
a theoretical study of the electrostatic confining poten- approximation.
5
En = (n 21 )hc , (1.6)
eB X
(E) = gs gv (E En ), (1.7)
h n=1
free path l = vF . The dimensionless quantity kF l is contributes to the diffusion current density j an amount
much greater than unity in metallic systems (see Table I dj given by
for typical values in a 2DEG), so the conductivity is large
compared with the quantum unit e2 /h (26 k)1 . djdiff = D{(E)f (E EF )dE}
From the preceding discussion it is obvious that the df
= dED(E) EF , (1.15)
current induced by the applied electric field is carried by dEF
all conduction electrons, since each electron acquires the
same average drift velocity. Nonetheless, to determine where the diffusion constant D is to be evaluated at en-
the conductivity it is sufficient to consider the response ergy E. The total diffusion current density follows on
of electrons near the Fermi level to the electric field. The integration over E:
reason is that the states that are more than a few times Z
df
the thermal energy kB T below EF are all filled so that in j = EF e2 dE (E, 0) , (1.16)
0 dEF
response to a weak electric field only the distribution of
electrons among states at energies close to EF is changed with (E, 0) the conductivity (1.11) at temperature zero
from the equilibrium Fermi-Dirac distribution for a Fermi energy equal to E. The requirement of van-
1 ishing current for a spatially constant electrochemical po-
E EF tential implies that the conductivity (EF , T ) at temper-
f (E EF ) = 1 + exp . (1.10)
kB T ature T and Fermi energy EF satisfies
(in terms of the transmission probability at the Fermi As T 0, df /dEF (E EF ), so indeed only E = EF
level rather than in terms of the diffusion constant). contributes to the energy average. Result (1.17) contains
The Einstein relation (1.11) for an electron gas at zero exclusively the effects of a finite temperature that are due
temperature follows on requiring that the sum of the drift to the thermal smearing of the Fermi-Dirac distribution.
current density E/e and the diffusion current density A possible temperature dependence of the scattering pro-
Dns vanishes in thermodynamic equilibrium, charac- cesses is not taken into account.
terized by a spatially constant electrochemical potential We now want to discuss one convenient way to calcu-
: late the diffusion constant (and hence obtain the conduc-
tivity). Consider the diffusion current density jx due to
E/e Dns = 0, when = 0. (1.12) a small constant density gradient, n(x) = n0 + cx. We
The electrochemical potential is the sum of the electro- write
static potential energy eV (which determines the en- jx = lim hvx (t = 0)n(x(t = t))i
ergy of the bottom of the conduction band) and the chem- t
ical potential EF (being the Fermi energy relative to the = lim chvx (0)x(t)i
t
conduction band bottom). Since (at zero temperature) Z t
dEF /dns = 1/(EF ), one has = lim c dthvx (0)vx (t)i, (1.18)
t 0
1
= eE + (EF ) ns . (1.13)
where t is time and the brackets h i denote an isotropic
The combination of Eqs. (1.12) and (1.13) yields the Ein- angular average over the Fermi surface. The time interval
stein relation (1.11) between and D. To verify that Eq. t , so the velocity of the electron at time 0 is
(1.11) is consistent with the earlier expression (1.9) for uncorrelated with its velocity at the earlier time t.
the Drude conductivity, one can use the result (see be- This allows us to neglect at x(t) the small deviations
low) for the 2D diffusion constant: from an isotropic velocity distribution induced by the
density gradient [which could not have been neglected
D = 21 vF2 = 12 vF l, (1.14) at x(0)]. Since only the time difference matters in the
velocity correlation function, one has hvx (0)vx (t)i =
in combination with Eq. (1.3) for the 2D density of states. hvx (t)vx (0)i. We thus obtain for the diffusion constant
At a finite temperature T , a chemical potential (or D = jx /c the familiar linear response formula95
Fermi energy) gradient EF induces a diffusion current Z
that is smeared out over an energy range of order kB T
D= dthvx (t)vx (0)i. (1.19)
around EF . The energy interval between E and E + dE 0
10
spacing (1/B) given by (i.e., when the channel width W < l). Diffuse bound-
1 e gs gv ary scattering leads to an increase in the resistivity in a
( )= , (1.30) zero magnetic field and to a nonmonotonic magnetore-
B h ns
sistivity in a perpendicular magnetic field, as discussed
providing a means to determine the electron density from in the following two subsections. The 2D channel ge-
a magnetoresistance measurement. This brief explana- ometry is essentially equivalent to the 3D geometry of
tion of the Shubnikov-De Haas effect needs refinement,20 a thin metal plate in a parallel magnetic field, with the
but is basically correct. The quantum Hall effect,8 being current flowing perpendicular to the field. Size effects in
the occurrence of plateaux in RH versus B at precisely this geometry were originally studied by Fuchs103 in a
1 h 1 zero magnetic field and by MacDonald104 for a nonzero
RH = , N = 1, 2, . . . , (1.31) field. The alternative configuration in which the mag-
gs gv e2 N
netic field is perpendicular to the thin plate, studied by
is a more subtle effect97 to which we cannot do justice Sondheimer105 does not have a 2D analog. We discuss
in a few lines (see Section IV.A). The quantization of in this section only the classical size effects, and thus the
the Hall resistance is related on a fundamental level to discreteness of the 1D subbands and of the Landau lev-
the quantization in zero magnetic field of the resistance els is ignored. Quantum size effects in the quasi-ballistic
of a ballistic point contact.6,7 We will present a unified transport regime are treated in Section II.F.
description of both these effects in Sections III.A and
III.B.
1. Boundary scattering
II. DIFFUSIVE AND QUASI-BALLISTIC TRANSPORT
In a zero magnetic field, scattering at the channel
A. Classical size effects boundaries increases the resistivity, unless the scattering
is specular. Specular scattering occurs if the confining
In metals, the dependence of the resistivity on the potential V (x, y) does not depend on the coordinate y
size of the sample has been the subject of study for along the channel axis. In that case the electron motion
almost a century.98 Because of the small Fermi wave along the channel is not influenced at all by the lateral
length in a metal, these are classical size effects. Com- confinement, so the resistivity retains its 2D bulk value
prehensive reviews of this field have been given by 0 = m/e2 ns . More generally, specular scattering re-
Chambers,99 Brandli and Olsen,100 Sondheimer,101 and, quires any roughness of the boundaries to be on a length
recently, Pippard.102 In semiconductor nanostructures scale smaller than the Fermi wavelength F . The con-
both classical and quantum size effects appear, and an fining potential created electrostatically by means of a
understanding of the former is necessary to distinguish gate electrode is known to cause predominantly specu-
them from the latter. Classical size effects in a 2DEG are lar scattering (as has been demonstrated by the electron
of intrinsic interest as well. First of all, a 2DEG is an ideal focusing experiments59 discussed in Section III.C). This
model system to study known size effects without the is a unique situation, not previously encountered in met-
complications of nonspherical Fermi surfaces and poly- als, where as a result of the small F (on the order of
crystallinity, characteristic for metals. Furthermore, it is the interatomic separation) diffuse boundary scattering
possible in a 2DEG to study the case of nearly complete dominates.102
specular boundary scattering, whereas in a metal diffuse Diffuse scattering means that the velocity distribution
scattering dominates. The much smaller cyclotron radius at the boundary is isotropic for velocity directions that
in a 2DEG, compared with a metal at the same magnetic point away from the boundary. Note that this implies
field value, allows one to enter the regime where the cy- that an incident electron is reflected with a (normal-
clotron radius is comparable to the range of the scattering ized) angular distribution P () = 12 cos , since the re-
potential. The resulting modifications of known effects in flection probability is proportional to the flux normal to
the quasi-ballistic transport regime are the subject of this the boundary. Diffuse scattering increases the resistivity
section. A variety of new classical size effects, not known above 0 by providing an upper bound W to the effective
from metals, appear in the ballistic regime, when the re- mean free path. In order of magnitude, (l/W )0 if
sistance is measured on a length scale below the mean l >
W (a more precise expression is derived later). In
free path. These are discussed in Section III.E, and re- general, boundary scattering is neither fully specular nor
quire a reconsideration of what is meant by a resistance fully diffuse and, moreover, depends on the angle of inci-
on such a short length scale. dence (grazing incidence favors specular scattering since
In the present section we assume that the channel the momentum along the channel is large and not eas-
length L (or, more generally, the separation between the ily reversed). The angular dependence is often ignored
voltage probes) is much larger than the mean free path l for simplicity, and the boundary scattering is described,
for impurity scattering so that the motion remains diffu- following Fuchs,103 by a single parameter p, such that
sive along the channel. Size effects in the resistivity oc- an electron colliding with the boundary is reflected spec-
cur when the motion across the channel becomes ballistic ularly with probability p and diffusely with probability
13
1 p. This specularity parameter is then used as a fit tion that satisfies the boundary conditions (2.2) is
parameter in comparison with experiments. Soffer106 has
developed a more accurate, and more complicated, mod- W x
F (r, ) = cy+cl sin 1 exp ,
eling in terms of an angle of incidence dependent specu- 2l| cos | l cos
larity parameter. (2.3)
In the extreme case of fully diffuse boundary scatter- where we have written l vF . One easily verifies that
ing (p = 0), one is justified in neglecting the dependence F has indeed a uniform density along x. The diffusion
of the scattering probability on the angle of incidence. current
We treat this case here in some detail to contrast it with Z W/2 Z 2
fully specular scattering, and because diffuse scattering Iy = vF dx d F sin (2.4)
can be of importance in 2DEG channels defined by ion W/2 0
beam exposure rather than by gates.107,108 We calculate
along the channel in response to the density gradient
the resistivity from the diffusion constant by means of
n/y = 2c determines the diffusion constant D =
the Einstein relation. Fuchs takes the alternative (but
(Iy /W )(n/y)1 . The resistivity = EF /ns e2 D then
equivalent) approach of calculating the resistivity from
follows from the Einstein relation (1.11), with the 2D
the linear response to an applied electric field.103 Im-
density of states ns /EF . The resulting expression is
purity scattering is taken as isotropic and elastic and is
described by a scattering time such that an electron 1 1
4l
Z
is scattered in a time interval dt with probability dt/ , = 0 1 d (1 )2 1/2
(1 e W/l
) ,
regardless of its position and velocity, This is the com- W 0
monly employed scattering time (or relaxation time) (2.5)
approximation. which can be easily evaluated numerically. It is worth
noting that the above result109 for /0 in a 2D channel
The channel geometry is defined by hard walls at
geometry does not differ much (less than 20%) from the
x = W/2 at which the electrons are scattered dif-
corresponding result103 in a 3D thin film.
fusely. The stationary electron distribution function at
For l/W 1 one has
the Fermi energy F (r, ) satisfies the Boltzmann equa-
tion
4 l
= 0 1 + , (2.6)
2 3 W
1 1 d
Z
v F = F+ F, (2.1)
r 0 2 which differs from Eq. (2.5) by less than 10% in the range
l/W <
10. For l/W 1 one has asymptotically
where r (x, y) is the position and is the angle that
the velocity v vF (cos , sin ) makes with the x-axis. l 1
= 0
The boundary condition corresponding to diffuse scat- 2 W ln(l/W )
tering is that F is independent of the velocity direction mvF 1
= . (2.7)
for velocities pointing away from the boundary. In view 2 ns e2 W ln(l/W )
of current conservation this boundary condition can be
written as In the absence of impurity scattering (i.e., in the limit
l ), Eq. (2.7) predicts a vanishing resistivity. Dif-
1
Z /2 fuse boundary scattering is ineffective in establishing a
F (r, ) = d F (r, ) cos , finite resistivity in this limit, because electrons with ve-
2 /2
locities nearly parallel to the channel walls can propagate
W 3 over large distances without collisions and thereby short
for x = , << ,
2 2 2 out the current. As shown by Tesanovic et al.,110 a small
1 3/2 but nonzero resistivity in the absence of impurity scat-
Z
= d F (r, ) cos , tering is recovered if one goes beyond the semiclassical
2 /2
approximation and includes the effect of the quantum
W mechanical uncertainty in the transverse component of
for x = , < < . (2.2)
2 2 2 the electron velocity.
To determine the diffusion constant, we look for a so-
lution of Eqs. (2.1) and (2.2) corresponding to a con- 2. Magneto size effects
stant density gradient along the channel, F (r, ) =
cy + f (x, ). Since there is no magnetic field, we antic- In an unbounded 2DEG, the longitudinal resistivity
ipate that the density
R 2 will be uniform across the channel is magnetic-field independent in the semiclassical ap-
width so that 0 f d = 0. The Boltzmann equation proximation (see Section I.D.3). We will discuss how a
(2.1) then simplifies to an ordinary differential equation nonzero magnetoresistivity can arise classically as a re-
for f , which can be solved straightforwardly. The solu- sult of boundary scattering. We consider the two extreme
14
1. Coherent backscattering
loc 2h
Z The foregoing analysis gives the following expressions
= dt C(t)et/ . (2.12) for the 2D and 1D weak localization corrections:
m 0
Z
2h e2
loc = dt (4Dt)1 (1 et/ )et/ = gs gv 2 ln 1 + , if l W, (2.14a)
m 0 4 h
Z
e2 l
2h 1/2
loc = dt W 1 (4Dt)1/2 (1 et/ ) et/ = gs gv 1 1+ , if l W,
m 0 2h W
(2.14b)
18
where we have used the expression for the Drude con- difference
ductivity = e2 (EF )D with the 2D density of states I I
(1.3). The ratio of the weak localization correction to the = h1 p+ dl h1 p dl
Drude conductivity loc / is of order 1/kF l for 2D weak +
2e 2eBS 2S
Z
localization and of order (l /W )(1/kF l) for 1D weak lo- = ( A) dS = 2 4 .
calization. In the 2D case, the correction is small (cf. the h h lm 0
values of kF l given in Table I), but still much larger than (2.15)
in a typical metal. The correction is greatly enhanced in
the 1D case l W . This is evident in the experimen- The phase difference is twice the enclosed area S divided
tal curves in Fig. 13, in which the resistivity increase at by the square of the magnetic length lm (h/eB)1/2 , or,
low temperatures is clearly visible only in the narrowest alternatively, it is 4 times the enclosed flux in units
channel. of the elementary flux quantum 0 h/e.
Many trajectories, with a wide distribution of loop ar-
The weak localization correction to the conductance eas, contribute to the weak localization effect. In a mag-
Gloc (W/L)loc is of order (e2 /h)(W/L) in the 2D netic field the loops with a large area S > 2
lm no longer
case and of order (e2 /h)(l /L) in the 1D case. In the lat- contribute, since on average the counterpropagating tra-
ter case, the conductance correction does not scale with jectories no longer interfere constructively. Since trajec-
the channel width W , contrary to what one would have tories enclosing a large area necessarily take a long time
classically. The conductance does scale with the recip- to complete, the effect of a magnetic field is essentially
rocal of the channel length L, at least for L l . The to introduce a long-time cutoff in the integrals of Eqs.
factor l /L in Gloc in the 1D case can be viewed as a (2.12) and (2.14), which is the magnetic relaxation time
consequence of the classical series addition of L/l chan- B . Recall that the long-time cutoff in the absence of
nel sections. It will then be clear that the scaling with L a magnetic field is the phase coherence time . The
has to break down when L < l , in which case the weak magnetic field thus begins to have a significant effect on
localization correction saturates at its value for L l . weak localization if B and are comparable, which
The maximum conductance correction in a narrow chan- occurs at a characteristic field Bc . The weak localiza-
nel is thus of order e2 /h, independent of the properties tion effect can be studied experimentally by measuring
of the sample. This universality is at the origin of the negative magnetoresistance peak associated with its
the phenomenon of the universal conductance fluctua- suppression by a magnetic field. The significance of such
tions discussed in Section II.C. experiments relies on the possibility of directly determin-
ing the phase coherence time . The experimental data
are most naturally analyzed in terms of the conductance.
The magnitude of the zero-field conductance correction
Gloc (B = 0) follows directly from the saturation value
of the magnetoconductance, according to
G(B Bc ) G(B = 0) = Gloc (B = 0). (2.16)
2. Suppression of weak localization by a magnetic field
Once Gloc (B = 0) is known, one can deduce the phase
coherence length l from Eq. (2.14), since D and are
(a) Theory. The resistance enhancement due to weak easily estimated from the classical part of the conduc-
localization can be suppressed by the application of a tance (which dominates at slightly elevated tempera-
weak magnetic field oriented perpendicular to the 2DEG. tures). The magnetoconductance contains, in addition,
The suppression results from the fact that a magnetic information on the channel width W , which is a parame-
field breaks time-reversal invariance. We recall that in a ter difficult to determine otherwise, as will become clear
zero magnetic field, time-reversal invariance guarantees in the discussion of the experimental situation in subsec-
that trajectories that form a closed loop have equal prob- tion (b).
ability amplitudes A+ and A for clockwise and coun- The effectiveness of a magnetic field in suppressing
terclockwise propagation around the loop. The result- weak localization (as contained in the functional depen-
ing constructive interference enhances the backscatter- dence of B on B, or in the expression for Bc ) is de-
ing probability, thereby leading to the weak localization termined by the average flux enclosed by backscattered
effect. In a weak magnetic field, however, a phase differ- trajectories of a given duration. One can distinguish dif-
ence develops between A+ and A , even if the curva- ferent regimes, depending on the relative magnitude of
ture of the trajectories by the Lorentz force can be totally the channel width W , the mean free path l vF , the
negected. This Aharonov-Bohm phase results from the magnetic length lm , and the phase coherence length l
fact that the canonical momentum p = mv eA of an (D )1/2 . In Table II the expressions for B and Bc are
electron in a magnetic field contains the vector potential summarized, as obtained by various authors.109,118,121,131
A. On clockwise (+) and counterclockwise () propa- In the following, we present a simple physical interpreta-
gation around a closed loop, one thus acquires a phase tion that explains these results, except for the numerical
19
TABLE II Magnetic relaxation time B and characteristic field Bc for the suppression of 2D and 1D weak localization.
2 4 4 2
lm 3lm C 1 lm C 2 lm l
B
2D W 2D W 3 vF W 2 vF
1/2
h 31/2
h 1 h 1 C1 h C2 l
Bc
e 2l2 e W l eW W vF e W 2 vF
a All results assume a channel length L l , a channel width
W F , as well as .
b From Refs.118,131 , and121 . The diffusion constant D = 1 v l. If
2 F
W l , a transition to 2D weak localization occurs when lm < W.
c From Ref.109 . The constants are given by C = 9.5 and C =
1 2
24/5 for specular boundary scattering (C1 = 4 and C2 = 3 for
a channel with diffuse boundary scattering). For pure metals, the
case lm < W is outside the diffusive transport regime for weak
localization.
prefactors. We will not discuss the effects of spin-orbit backscattered trajectory on a time scale B is then of the
scattering131 or of superconducting fluctuations,132 since order S DB (assuming diffusive motion on this time
2
these may be neglected in the systems considered in this scale). The corresponding phase shift is DB /lm , in
review. In this subsection we only discuss the dirty metal view of Eq. (2.15). The criteria 1 and B thus
regime l W . The pure metal regime l W , in which imply
boundary scattering plays an important role, will be dis-
2
cussed in Section II.B.3. B lm /D; Bc h/eD h/el2 . (2.17)
If l W the twodimensional weak localization cor-
rection to the conductivity applies, given by Eq. (2.14a) The full expression for the magnetoconductance due to
for a zero magnetic field. The typical area S enclosed by a weak localization is118,131
e2
W 1 B 1 B
G2D 2D
loc (B) Gloc (0) = gs gv 2 + + + ln , (2.18)
L 4 h 2 2 2 2
2
where (x) is the digamma function and B = lm /2D. dirty metal regime. This refers to a narrow channel with
The digamma function has the asymptotic approxima- l W so that the wall-to-wall motion is diffusive. Since
tion (x) ln(x) 1/x for large x; thus, in a zero the phase coherence length exceeds the channel width,
magnetic field result (2.14a) is recovered (assuming also the backscattered trajectories on a time scale B have
). In the case of 2D weak localization the char- a typical enclosed area S W (DB )1/2 (see Fig. 15).
2
acteristic field Bc is usually very weak. For example, if Consequently, the condition S lm for a unit phase shift
l = 1 m, then Bc 1 mT. The suppression of the weak implies
localization effect is complete when B < , which oc- 4
B lm /DW 2 ; Bc h/eW l . (2.19)
curs for B > h/eD h/el 2
. These fields are still much
weaker than classically strong fields for which c > 1 The difference with the 2D case is that the enclosed
(as can be verified by noting that when B = h/el2, one flux on a given time scale is reduced, due to the lat-
has c = 1/kF l 1). The neglect of the curvature of eral compression of the backscattered trajectories. This
electron trajectories in the theory of weak localization is leads to an enhancement by a factor l /W of the charac-
thus entirely justified in the 2D case. The safety margin teristic field scale Bc , compared with Eq. (2.17). The
is narrower in the 1D case, however, since the character- full expression for the weak localization correction if
istic fields can become significantly enhanced. l , lm W l is121
1/2
e2 1
The one-dimensional case W l in a magnetic field 1 1
G1D (B) = g g
s v + , (2.20)
has first been treated by Altshuler and Aronov121 in the loc
h L D DB
20
4
with B = 3lm /W 2 D. For an elementary derivation of
this result, see Ref.109 . At lm W a crossover from 1D
to 2D weak localization occurs [i.e., from Eq. (2.20) to Eq.
(2.18)]. The reason for this crossover is that the lateral
confinement becomes irrelevant for the weak localization
when lm < W , because the trajectories of duration B
then have a typical extension (DB )1/2 < W , according
to Eq. (2.19). This crossover from 1D to 2D restricts the
available field range that can be used to study the mag-
netoconductance associated with 1D weak localization.
The magnetic relaxation time B in the dirty metal
regime is found to be inversely proportional to the dif-
fusion constant D, in 2D as well as in 1D. The reason
for this dependence is clear: faster diffusion implies that FIG. 16 A comparison between the magnetoresistance
2 R/R [R(0)R(B)]/R(0) due to 2D weak localization in a
less time is needed to complete a loop of area lm . It is
wide channel (upper panel) and due to 1D weak localization in
remarkable that in the pure metal regime such a propor- a narrow channel (lower panel), at various temperatures. The
tionality no longer holds. This is a consequence of the solid curves are fits based on Eqs. (2.18) and (2.20). Taken
flux cancellation effect discussed in Section II.B.3. from K. K. Choi et al., Phys. Rev. B 36, 7751 (1987).
(b) Experiments in the dirty metal regime.
Magnetoresistance experiments have been widely used
to study the weak localization correction to the con-
ductivity of wide 2D electron gases in Si28,30,133,134,135 cantly smaller differences are obtained27,63 if a shallow-
and GaAs.23,136,137 Here we will discuss the experimental etched mesa is used for the lateral confinement, as in
magnetoresistance studies of weak localization in narrow Fig. 4c. A split-gate device (as in Fig. 4b) of variable
channels in Si MOSFETs34,38,40,138 and GaAs-AlGaAs width has been used by Zheng et al.24 to study weak
heterostructures.24,25,58 As an illustrative example, we localization in GaAs-AlGaAs heterostructure channels.
reproduce in Fig. 16 a set of experimental results for Magnetoresistance experiments in a very narrow split-
R/R [R(0) R(B)]/R(0) obtained by Choi et al.25 in gate device (fabricated using electron beam lithography)
a wide and in a narrow GaAs-AlGaAs heterostructure. were reported by Thornton et al.58 and analyzed in terms
The quantity R is positive, so the resistance decreases of the dirty metal theory. Unfortunately, in their exper-
on applying a magnetic field. The 2D results are simi- iment the mean free path of 450 nm exceeded the width
lar to those obtained earlier by Paalanen et al.137 The inferred from a fit to Eq. (2.20) by an order of magnitude,
qualitative difference in field scale for the suppression of so an analysis in terms of the pure metal theory would
2D (top) and 1D (bottom) weak localization is nicely il- have been required.
lustrated by the data in Fig. 16. The magnetoresistance Early magnetoresistance experiments on narrow Si ac-
peak is narrower in the 2D case, consistent with the en- cumulation layers were performed by Dean and Pepper,34
hancement in 1D of the characteristic field Bc for the sup- in which they observed evidence for a crossover from the
pression of weak localization, which we discussed in Sec- 2D to the 1D weak localization regime. A comparison of
tion II.B.2(a). The solid curves in Fig. 16 were obtained weak localization in wide and narrow Si inversion layers
from the 2D theoretical expression (2.18) and the 1D was reported by Wheeler et al.38 The conducting width
dirty metal result (2.20), treating W and l as adjustable of the narrow channel was taken to be equal to the litho-
parameters. A noteworthy finding of Choi et al.25 is that graphic width of the gate (about 400 nm), while the mean
the effective channel width W is considerably reduced free path was estimated to be about 100 nm. This experi-
below the lithographic width Wlith in narrow channels ment on a low-mobility Si channel thus meets the require-
defined by a deep-etched mesa (as in Fig. 4a). Differ- ment l W for the dirty metal regime. The 1D weak
ences W Wlith of about 0.8 m were found.25 Signifi- localization condition l W was only marginally sat-
21
isfied, however. Licini et al.40 reported a negative mag- lation results from the fact that typically backscattered
netoresistance peak in 270-nm-wide Si inversion layers,
which was well described by the 2D theory at a temper-
ature of 2.2 K, where l = 120 nm. Deviations from the
2D form were found at lower temperatures, but the 1D
regime was never fully entered. A more recent study of
1D weak localization in a narrow Si accumulation layer
has been performed by Pooke et al.138 at low tempera-
tures, and the margins are somewhat larger in their case.
We note a difficulty inherent to experiments on 1D
weak localization in semiconductor channels in the dirty
metal regime. For 1D weak localization it is required that
the phase coherence length l is much larger than the
channel width. If the mean free path is short, then the FIG. 17 Illustration of the flux cancellation effect for a closed
experiment is in the dirty metal regime l W , but the trajectory of one electron in a narrow channel with diffuse
localization will be only marginally one-dimensional since boundary scattering. The trajectory is composed of two loops
the phase coherence length l (D )1/2 = (vF l /2)1/2 of equal area but opposite orientation, so it encloses zero flux.
will be short as well (except for the lowest experimental Taken from C. W. J. Beenakker and H. van Houten, Phys.
temperatures). If the mean free path is long, then the Rev. B. 38, 3232 (1988).
1D criterion l W is easily satisfied, but the require-
ment l W will now be hard to meet so that the ex-
periment will tend to be in the pure metal regime. A trajectories for l W self-intersect (cf. Fig. 17) and
quantitative comparison with the theory (which would are thus composed of smaller loops that are traversed in
allow a reliable determination of l ) is hampered be- opposite directions. Zero net flux is enclosed by closed
cause the asymptotic regimes studied theoretically are trajectories involving only wall collisions (as indicated by
not accessible experimentally and because the channel the shaded areas in Fig. 17, which are equal but of oppo-
width is not known a priori. Nanostructures are thus site orientation), so impurity collisions are required for
not the best candidates for a quantitative study of the phase relaxation in a magnetic field. This is in contrast
phase coherence length, which is better studied in 2D to the dirty metal regime considered before, where impu-
systems. An altogether different complication is that rity scattering hinders phase relaxation by reducing the
quantum corrections to the conductivity in semiconduc- diffusion constant. The resulting nonmonotonous depen-
tor nanostructures can be remarkably large (up to 100% dence of phase relaxation on impurity scattering in the
at sufficiently low temperatures27,34 ), which puts them dirty and pure metal regimes is illustrated in Fig. 18,
beyond the range of validity of the perturbation theory. where the calculated109 magnetic relaxation time B is
plotted as a function of l/W for a fixed ratio lm /W .
Before continuing our discussion of the flux cancella-
3. Boundary scattering and flux cancellation tion effect, we give a more precise definition of the phase
relaxation time B . The effect of a magnetic field on
(a) Theory. In the previous subsection we noticed weak localization is accounted for formally by inserting
that the pure metal regime, where l W , is charac- the term
teristic for 1D weak localization in semiconductor nano-
structures. This regime was first theoretically consid- hei(t) |r(t) = r(0)i = et/B , W lm , l , (2.21)
ered by Dugaev and Khmelnitskii,120 for the geometry
of a thin metal film in a parallel magnetic field and for in the integrand of Eq. (2.12). The term (2.21) is the
diffuse boundary scattering. The geometry of a narrow conditional average over all closed trajectories having du-
2DEG channel in a perpendicular magnetic field, with ei- ration t of the phase factor ei(t) , with the phase dif-
ther diffuse or specular boundary scattering, was treated ference defined in Eq. (2.15). It can be shown109 that in
by the present authors.109 Note that the nature of the the case of 1D weak localization (and for lm W ), this
boundary scattering did not play a role in the dirty metal term is given by an exponential decay factor exp(t/B ),
regime of Section II.B.2, since there the channel walls which defines the magnetic relaxation time B . In this
only serve to impose a geometrical restriction on the lat- regime the weak localization correction to the conduc-
eral diffusion.121 The flux cancellation effect is character- tivity in the presence of a magnetic field is then simply
istic of the pure metal regime, where the electrons move given by Eq. (2.14b), after the substitution
ballistically from one wall to the other. This effect (which
also plays a role in the superconductivity of thin films in 1 1 + B1 . (2.22)
a parallel magnetic field122 ) leads to a further enhance-
ment of the characteristic field scale Bc . Flux cancel- Explicitly, one obtains
22
1/2 1/2 !
e2 1
1 1 1 1 1
Gloc (B) = gs gv + + + . (2.23)
hL D DB D DB D
One can see from Fig. 18 and Table II that in the pure
metal regime l W , a weak and strong field regime can
2
be distinguished, depending on the ratio W l/lm . This ra-
tio corresponds to the maximum phase change on a closed
trajectory of linear extension l (measured along the chan-
2
nel). In the weak field regime (W l/lm 1) many impu-
rity collisions are required before a closed electron loop
encloses sufficient flux for complete phase relaxation. In
this regime a further increase of the mean free path does
not decrease the phase relaxation time (in contrast to the
dirty metal regime), because as a consequence of the flux
cancellation effect, faster diffusion along the channel does
not lead to a larger enclosed flux. On comparing the re-
sult in Table II for Bc in the weak field regime with that
for the dirty metal regime, one sees an enhancement of
the characteristic field by a factor (l/W )1/2 . The strong
2
field regime is reached if W l/lm 1, while still lm W .
Under these conditions, a single impurity collision can
lead to a closed trajectory that encloses sufficient flux FIG. 18 Phase relaxation time B in a channel with specular
boundary scattering, as a function of the elastic mean free
for phase relaxation. The phase relaxation rate 1/B
path l. The plot has been obtained by a numerical simulation
is now proportional to the impurity scattering rate 1/ of the phase relaxation process for a magnetic field such that
and, thus, to 1/l. The relaxation time B accordingly lm = 10 W . The dashed lines are analytic formulas valid in
increases linearly with l in this regime (see Fig. 18). For the three asymptotic regimes (see Table II). Taken from C.
comparison with experiments in the pure metal regime, W. J. Beenakker and H. van Houten, Phys. Rev. B 38, 3232
an analytic formula that interpolates between the weak (1988).
and strong field regimes is useful. The following formula
agrees well with numerical calculations:109
ization in the pure metal regime was reported in Refs.26
B = Bweak + Bstrong . (2.24)
and27 . In a narrow channel defined by the shallow-mesa
Here Bweak and Bstrong are the expressions for B in the etch technique of Fig. 4c (with a conducting width es-
asymptotic weak and strong field regimes, as given in timated at 0.12 m), a pronounced negative magnetore-
Table II. sistance effect was found, similar to that observed by
So far, we have assumed that the transport is diffu- Thornton et al.58 A good agreement of the experimen-
sive on time scales corresponding to . This will be a tal results with the theory109 for weak localization in
good approximation only if . Coherent diffusion the pure metal regime was obtained (see Fig. 19), as-
breaks down if and are of comparable magnitude (as suming specular boundary scattering (diffuse boundary
may be the case in high-mobility channels). The mod- scattering could not describe the data). The width de-
ification of weak localization as one enters the ballistic duced from the analysis was consistent with independent
transport regime has been investigated by Wittmann and estimates from other magnetoresistance effects. Further
Schmid.130 It would be of interest to see to what extent measurements in this regime were reported by Chang et
the ad hoc short-time cutoff introduced in our Eq. (2.14), al.70,139 and, more recently, by Hiramoto et al.81 These
which is responsible for the second bracketed term in Eq. experiments were also well described by the theory of
(2.23), is satisfactory. Ref.109 .
(b) Experiments in the pure metal regime. Be-
cause of the high mobility required, the pure metal regime
has been explored using GaAs-AlGaAs heterostructures C. Conductance fluctuations
only. The first experiments on weak localization in the
pure metal regime were done by Thornton et al.,58 in Classically, sample-to-sample fluctuations in the con-
a narrow split-gate device, although the data were ana- ductance are negligible in the diffusive (or quasi-ballistic)
lyzed in terms of the theory for the dirty metal regime. transport regime. In a narrow-channel geometry, for
An experimental study specifically aimed at weak local- example, the root-mean-square Gclass of the classical
23
where t denotes the quantum mechanical transmission where we have neglected terms smaller by a factor 1/M
probability amplitude from the incident channel to the (assuming M 1). One thus finds that the variance
outgoing channel (cf. Fig. 20). The ensemble averaged of the reflection probability is equal to the square of its
transmission probability h|t |2 i does not depend on or average:
, so the correspondence between Eqs. (2.25) and (2.26)
requires Var (|r |2 ) = h|r |2 i2 . (2.31)
h|t |2 i = l/2N L. (2.27) The average reflection probability h|r |2 i does not de-
pend on and . Thus, from Eqs. (2.27) and (2.28) it
The magnitude of the conductance fluctuations is char- follows that
acterized by its variance Var (G) h(G hGi)2 i. As
discussed by Lee, a difficulty arises in a direct evalu- h|r |2 i = N 1 (1 order(l/L)). (2.32)
ation of Var (G) from Eq. (2.26), because the correla- Combining Eqs. (2.29), (2.31), and (2.32), one obtains
tion in the transmission probabilities |t |2 for different the result that the zero-temperature conductance has a
pairs of incident and outgoing channels , may not be variance (e2 /h)2 , independent of l or L (in the diffusive
neglected.142 The reason is presumably that transmission limit l L). We have discussed this argument of Lee in
through the disordered region involves a large number of some detail, because no other simple argument known to
impurity collisions, so a sequence of scattering events will us gives physical insight in this remarkable result.
in general be shared by different channels. On the same The numerical prefactors follow from the diagram-
grounds, it is reasonable to assume that the reflection matic analysis.140,141,145,146 The result of Lee and
probabilities |r |2 for different pairs of incident and Stone141 for the root-mean-square magnitude of the con-
reflected channels are uncorrelated, since the reflection ductance fluctuations at T = 0 can be written in the form
back into the source reservoir would seem to be dom-
inated by only a few scattering events.142 (The formal
diagrammatic analysis of Refs.140 and141 is required here gs gv 1/2 e2
for a convincing argument.) The reflection and trans- G [Var (G)]1/2 = C . (2.33)
2 h
mission probabilities are related by current conservation
Here C is a constant that depends on the shape of the
sample. Typically, C is of order unity; for example, C
N
X N
X 0.73 in a narrow channel with L W . (However, in the
|t |2 = N |r |2 . (2.28) opposite limit W L of a wide and short channel, C
,=1 ,=1 is of order (W/L)1/2 .) The parameter = 1 in a zero
magnetic field when time-reversal symmetry holds; = 2
so the variance of the conductance equals when time-reversal symmetry is broken by a magnetic
2 field. The factor gs gv assumes complete spin and valley
e2
degeneracy. If the magnetic field is sufficiently strong
X
Var (G) = Var |r |2
h that the two spin directions give statistically independent
e2
2 contributions to the conductance, then the variances add
= N 2 Var (|r |2 ), (2.29) so that the factor gs in G is to be replaced by a factor
h 1/2
gs . We will return to this point in Section II.C.4.
assuming uncorrelated reflection probabilities. A large
number M of scattering sequences through the disordered
region contributes with amplitude A(i) (i = 1, 2, . . . , M ) 2. Nonzero temperatures
to the reflection probability amplitude r . (The dif-
ferent scattering sequences can be seen as indepen- At nonzero temperatures, the magnitude of the con-
dent Feynman paths in a path integral formulation of ductance fluctuations is reduced below G e2 /h. One
the problem.142 ) To calculate Var (|r |2 ) = h|r |4 i reason is the effect of a finite phase coherence length
h|r |2 i2 , one may then write (neglecting correlations in l (D )1/2 ; another is the effect of thermal averaging,
A(i) for different i) as expressed by the thermal length lT (hD/kB T )1/2 .
The effect of a finite temperature, contained in l and
M
X lT , is to partially restore self-averaging, albeit that the
h|r |4 i = hA (i)A(j)A (k)A(l)i suppression of the fluctuation with sample size is much
i,j,k,l=1 weaker than would be the case classically. The theory
M has been presented clearly and in detail by Lee, Stone,
and Fukuyama.145 We limit the present discussion to the
X
h|A(i)|2 ih|A(k)|2 iij kl
=
i,j,k,l=1 1D regime W l L, characteristic for narrow 2DEG
channels.
+ h|A(i)|2 ih|A(j)|2 iil jk
The effects of thermal averaging may be neglected if
= 2h|r |2 i2 , (2.30) l lT (see below). The channel may then be thought
25
to be subdivided in uncorrelated segments of length l . absence of energy averaging. (A word of caution: as dis-
The conductance fluctuation of each segment individually cussed in Ref.145 , the assumption of N uncorrelated en-
will be of order e2 /h, as it is at zero temperature. The ergy intervals is valid in the 1D case W l considered
root-mean-square conductance fluctuation of the entire here, but not in higher dimensions.) From the foregoing
channel is easily estimated. The segments are in series, argument it follows that
so their resistances add according to Ohms law. We de-
1/2
note the resistance of a channel segment of length l by e2 lT l
R1 . The variance of R1 is Var (R1 ) hR1 i4 Var (R11 ) G = constant if l lT . (2.37)
h L3/2
hR1 i4 (e2 /h)2 . The average resistance of the whole chan-
nel hRi = (L/l )hR1 i increases linearly with the number The asymptotic expressions (2.34) and (2.37) were de-
L/l of uncorrelated channel segments, just as its vari- rived by Lee, Stone, and Fukuyama145 and by Altshuler
ance and Khmelnitskii146 up to unspecified constant prefac-
tors. These constants have been evaluated in Ref.147 ,
Var (R) = (L/l )Var (R1 ) (L/l )hR1 i4 (e2 /h)2 . and are given in Table III. In that paper we also gave an
interpolation formula
(The root-mean-square resistance fluctuation thus grows
3/2
as (L/l )1/2 , the square root of the number of channel gs gv 1/2 e2 l
segments in series.) Expressed in terms of a conductance, G = 12
2 h L
one thus has Var (G) hRi4 Var (R) (l /L)3 (e2 /h)2 , " 2 #1/2
or 9 l
1+ , (2.38)
3/2 2 lT
e2 l
G = constant , if l lT . (2.34)
h L with defined in the previous subsection. This formula
is valid (within 10% accuracy) also in the intermediate
The constant prefactor is given in Table III.
regime when l lT , and is useful for comparison with
We now turn to the second effect of the finite temper-
experiments, in which generally l and lT are not well
ature, which is the smearing of the fluctuations by the
separated (cf. Table I).
energy average within an interval of order kB T around
the Fermi energy EF . Note that we did not have to
consider this thermal averaging in the context of the 3. Magnetoconductance fluctuations
weak localization effect, since that is a systematic, rather
than a fluctuating, property of the sample. Two inter- Experimentally, one generally studies the conductance
fering Feynman paths, traversed with an energy differ- fluctuations resulting from a change in Fermi energy EF
ence E, have to be considered as uncorrelated after a or magnetic field B rather than from a change in im-
time t1 , if the acquired phase difference t1 E/h is of or- purity configuration. A comparison with the theoretical
der unity. In this time the electrons diffuse a distance ensemble average becomes possible if one assumes that,
L1 = (Dt1 )1/2 (hD/E)1/2 . One can now define a cor- insofar as the conductance fluctuations are concerned, a
relation energy Ec (L1 ), as the energy difference for which sufficiently large change in EF or B is equivalent to a
the phase difference following diffusion over a distance L1 complete change in impurity configuration (this ergodic
is unity: hypothesis has been proven in Ref.148 ). The reason for
Ec (L1 ) hD/L21 . (2.35) this equivalence is that, on one hand, the conductance
at EF + EF and B + B is uncorrelated with that at
The thermal length lT is defined such that Ec (lT ) kB T , EF and B, provided either EF or B is larger than
which implies a correlation energy Ec or correlation field Bc . On
the other hand, the correlation energies and fields are in
lT (hD/kB T )1/2 . (2.36) general sufficiently small that the statistical properties of
the ensemble are not modified by the increment in EF or
(Note that this definition of lT differs by a factor of B, so one is essentially studying a new member of the
(2)1/2 from that in Ref.145 .) The thermal smearing same ensemble, without changing the sample.
of the conductance fluctuations is of importance only if This subsection deals with the calculation of the cor-
phase coherence extends beyond a length scale lT (i.e., if relation field Bc . (The correlation energy is discussed
l lT ). In this case the total energy interval kB T in Ref.145 and will not be considered here.) The magne-
around the Fermi level that is available for transport toconductance correlation function is defined as
is divided into subintervals of width Ec (l ) = h/ in
which phase coherence is maintained. There is a num- F (B) h[G(B)hG(B)i][G(B+B)hG(B+B)i]i,
ber N kB T /Ec (l ) of such subintervals, which we as- (2.39)
sume to be uncorrelated. The root-mean-square varia- where the angle brackets h i denote, as before, an
tion G of the conductance is then reduced by a factor ensemble average. The root-mean-square variation G
N 1/2 lT /l with respect to the result (2.34) in the considered in the previous two subsections is equal to
26
TABLE III Asymptotic expressions for the root-mean-square conductance fluctuations in a narrow channel.
T = 0a T > 0a
lT , l L l L, lT lT l L
3/2 1/2
e2 e2 e 2 lT l
2 1/2 l
G C C C
gs gv h h L h L3/2
1/2
8
C 0.73 12
3
a The results assume a narrow channel (W L), with a 2D den-
F (0)1/2 . The correlation field Bc is defined as the half- different from r . We recall that for weak localization
width at half-height F (Bc ) F (0)/2. The correlation the phase difference is that of the cooperon, with
function F (B) is determined theoretically141,145,146 by the vector potential increment A = 0 [cf. Eq. (2.15)].
temporal and spatial integrals of two propagators: the The average phase factor then decays exponentially as
diffuson Pd (r, r , t) and the cooperon Pc (r, r , t). As dis- hexp(i)i = exp(t/B ) [cf. Eq. (2.21)], with the re-
cussed by Chakravarty and Schmid,126 these propagators laxation time B given as a function of magnetic field B
consist of the product of three terms: (1) the classical in Table II. We conclude that the same exponential decay
probability to diffuse from r to r in a time t (indepen- holds for the average cooperon and diffuson phase factors
dent of B in the field range c 1 of interest here); (2) after substitution of B B + B/2 and B B/2,
the relaxation factor exp(t/ ), which describes the loss respectively, in the expressions for B :
of phase coherence due to inelastic scattering events; (3)
the average phase factor hexp(i)i, which describes the hei i(diffuson) = exp(t/B/2 ), (2.41a)
loss of phase coherence due to the magnetic field. The he i
i(cooperon) = exp(t/B+B/2 ). (2.41b)
average h i is taken over all classical trajectories that
diffuse from r to r in a time t. The phase difference The cooperon is suppressed when B+B/2 <
is different for a diffuson or cooperon: ,
which occurs on the same field scale as the suppression
Z of weak localization (determined by B < ). The sup-
e r
(diffuson) = A dl, (2.40a) pression of the cooperon can be seen as a consequence
h r of the breaking of the time-reversal invariance by the
Z magnetic field, similar to the suppression of weak local-
e r
(cooperon) = (2A + A) dl, (2.40b) ization. In a zero field the cooperons and the diffusons
h r
contribute equally to the variance of the conductance;
where the line integral is along a classical trajectory. therefore, when the cooperon is suppressed, Var (G) is
The vector potential A corresponds to the magnetic field reduced by a factor of 2. (The parameter in Table
B = A, and the vector potential increment A III thus changes from 1 to 2 when B increases beyond
corresponds to the field increment B in the correlation Bc .) In general, the magnetoconductance fluctuations
function F (B) (according to B = A). An ex- are studied for B > Bc (i.e., for fields beyond the weak
planation of the different magnetic field dependencies of localization peak). Then only the diffuson contributes to
the diffuson and cooperon in terms of Feynman paths is the conductance fluctuations, since the relaxation time of
given shortly. the diffuson is determined by the field increment B in
In Ref.109 we have proven that in a narrow channel the correlation function F (B), not by the magnetic field
(W l ) the average phase factor hexp(i)i does not itself. This is the critical difference with weak localiza-
depend on initial and final coordinates r and r , pro- tion: The conductance fluctuations are not suppressed by
vided that one works in the Landau gauge and that a weak magnetic field. The different behavior of cooper-
t . This is a very useful property, since it allows ons and diffusons can be understood in terms of Feyn-
one to transpose the results for hexp(i)i obtained for man paths. The correlation function F (B) contains
r = r in the context of weak localization to the present the product of four Feynman path amplitudes A(i, B),
problem of the conductance fluctuations, where r can be A (j, B), A(k, B + B), and A (l, B + B) along var-
27
FIG. 22 Plot of the dimensionless correlation flux c FIG. 23 Negative magnetoresistance and aperiodic magne-
Bc l W e/h for the magnetoconductance fluctuations as a toresistance fluctuations in a narrow Si inversion layer channel
function of l /l in the regime lT l . The solid curve is for for several values of the gate voltage VG . Note that the verti-
the case l = 5 W ; the dashed line is for l W . Taken from cal offset and scale is different for each VG . Taken from J. C.
C. W. J. Beenakker and H. van Houten, Phys. Rev. B 37, Licini et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 55, 2987 (1985).
6544 (1988).
experiments with a varying number of rings in series.189 toresistance data of a very narrow ring. It is not quite
Many more experiments have been performed on one- clear whether this harmonic is due to the Altshuler-
and two-dimensional arrays and networks, as reviewed in Aronov-Spivak mechanism involving the constructive in-
Refs.190 and191 . terference of two time-reversed trajectories182 or to the
In this connection, we mention that the development random interference of two non-time-reversed Feynman
of the theory of aperiodic conductance fluctuations (dis- paths winding around the entire ring.1,144,187 The rela-
cussed in Section II.C) has been much stimulated by their tive weakness of the h/2e effect in single 2DEG rings is
observation in metal rings by Webb et al.,165 in the course also typical for most experiments on single metal rings
of their search for the Aharonov-Bohm effect. The reason (although the opposite was found to be true in the case
that aperiodic fluctuations are observed in rings (in ad- of aluminum rings by Chandrasekhar et al.,197 for rea-
dition to periodic oscillations) is that the magnetic field sons which are not understood). This is in contrast to
penetrates the width of the arms of the ring and is not the case of arrays or cylinders, where, as we mentioned,
confined to its interior. By fabricating rings with a large the h/2e oscillations are predominant the h/e effect be-
ratio of radius r to width W , researchers have proven it ing ensemble-averaged to zero because of its sample-
is possible to separate190 the magnetic field scales of the specific phase. In view of the fact that the experiments
periodic and aperiodic oscillations (which are given by a on 2DEG rings explore the borderline between diffusive
field interval of order h/er2 and h/eW l , respectively). and ballistic transport, they are rather difficult to ana-
The penetration of the magnetic field in the arms of the lyze quantitatively. A theoretical study of the Aharonov-
ring also leads to a broadening of the peak in the Fourier Bohm effect in the purely ballistic transport regime was
transform at the e/h and 2e/h periodicities, associated performed by Datta and Bandyopadhyay,198 in relation
with a distribution of enclosed flux. The width of the to an experimental observation of the effect in a double-
Fourier peak can be used as a rough estimate for the quantum-well device.199 A related study was published
width of the arms of the ring. In addition, the nonzero by Barker.200
field in the arms of the ring also leads to a damping of The Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in the magnetoresis-
the amplitude of the ensemble-averaged h/2e oscillations tance of a small ring in a high-mobility 2DEG are quite
when the flux through the arms is sufficiently large to impressive. As an illustration, we reproduce in Fig. 26
suppress weak localization.191 the results obtained by Timp et al.201 Low-frequency
Two excellent reviews of the Aharonov-Bohm effect in modulations were filtered out, so that the rapid oscil-
metal rings and cylinders exist.190,191 In the following lations are superimposed on a constant background. The
we discuss the experiments in semiconductor nanostruc- amplitude of the h/e oscillations diminishes with increas-
tures in the weak-field regime c < 1, where the ef- ing magnetic field until eventually the Aharonov-Bohm
fect of the Lorentz force on the trajectories can be ne- effect is completely suppressed. The reduction in am-
glected. The strong-field regime c > 1 (which is not plitude is accompanied by a reduction in frequency. A
easily accessible in the usual polycrystalline metal rings) similar observation was made by Ford et al.74 In metals,
is only briefly mentioned; it is discussed more extensively in contrast, the Aharonov-Bohm oscillations persist to
in Section IV.D. To our knowledge, no observation of the highest experimental fields, with constant frequency.
Aharonov-Bohm magnetoresistance oscillations in Si in- The different behavior in a 2DEG is a consequence of
version layers has been reported. The first observation of the effect of the Lorentz force on the electrons in the
the Aharonov-Bohm effect in a 2DEG ring was published ring, which is of importance when the cyclotron diame-
by Timp et al.,69 who employed high-mobility GaAs- ter 2lcycl becomes smaller than the width W of the arm
AlGaAs heterostructure material. Similar results were of the ring, provided W < l (note that lcycl = hkF /eB
obtained independently by Ford et al.73 and Ishibashi et is much smaller in a 2DEG than in a metal, at the same
al.193 More detailed studies soon followed.74,139,176,194,195 magnetic field value). We will return to these effects in
A characteristic feature of these experiments is the large Section IV.D.
amplitude of the h/e oscillations (up to 10% of the aver- An electrostatic potential V affects the phase R of the
age resistance), much higher than in metal rings (where electron wave function through the term (e/h) V dt in
the effect is at best192,196,197 of order 0.1%). A similar much the same way as a vector potential does. If the
difference in magnitude is found for the aperiodic mag- two arms of the ring have a potential difference V , and
netoresistance fluctuations in metals and semiconductor an electron traverses an arm in a time t, then the ac-
nanostructures. The reason is simply that the amplitude quired phase shift would lead to oscillations in the re-
G of the periodic or aperiodic conductance oscillations sistance with periodicity V = h/et. The electrostatic
has a maximum value of order e2 /h, so the maximum Aharonov-Bohm effect has a periodicity that depends on
relative resistance oscillation R/R RG Re2 /h is the transit time t, and is not a geometrical property of
proportional to the average resistance R, which is typi- the ring, as it is for the magnetic effect. A distribution
cally much smaller in metal rings. of transit times could easily average out the oscillations.
In most studies only the h/e fundamental periodic- Note that the potential difference effectuates the phase
ity is observed, although Ford et al.73,74 found a weak difference by changing the wavelength of the electrons
h/2e harmonic in the Fourier transform of the magne- (via a change in their kinetic energy), which also distin-
32
E. Electron-electron interactions
1. Theory
troduces a purely quantum mechanical correlation be- of the diffuson is isotropic. The smaller cooperon contri-
tween their motion, which is observable in the conduc- butions exhibit a similar sensitivity as weak localization
tivity. The diffraction of one electron wave by the inter- to a weak perpendicular magnetic field, the character-
2 2
ference pattern generated by another electron wave will istic field being determined by lm lT in 2D and by
2
only be of importance if their wavelength difference, and lm W lT in 1D (in the dirty metal regime W l,
thus their energy difference, is small. At a finite temper- so flux cancellation does not play a significant role). The
ature T , the characteristic energy difference is kB T . The magnetic length lm (h/eB )1/2 contains only the com-
time T h/kB T enters as a long-time cutoff in the the- ponent B of the field perpendicular to the 2DEG, since
ory of electron-electron interactions in a disordered con- the magnetic field affects the cooperon via the phase
ductor, in the usual case127,211 T < . (Fukuyama
212
shift induced by the enclosed flux. The anisotropy and
also discusses the opposite limit T .) Accord- the small characteristic field are two ways to distinguish
ingy, the magnitude of the thermal length lT (DT )1/2 experimentally the cooperon contribution from that of
compared with the width W determines the dimensional the diffuson. It is much more difficult to distinguish the
crossover from 2D to 1D [for lT < l (D )1/2 ]. In cooperon contribution to Gee from the weak localization
the expression for the conductivity correction associated correction, since both effects have the same anisotropy,
with electron-electron interactions, the long-time cutoff while their characteristic fields are comparable (lT and
T enters logarithmically in 2D and as a square root in l not being widely separated in the systems considered
1D. These expressions thus have the same form as for here). This complication is made somewhat less problem-
weak localization, but with the phase coherence time atic by the fact that the cooperon contribution to Gee
replaced by T . The origin of this difference is that a fi- is often considerably smaller than Gloc , in which case
nite temperature does not introduce a long-time cutoff for it can be ignored. In 1D the reduction factor55,211 is of
the single-electron quantum interference effect responsi- order [1 + ln(EF /kB T )]1 (lT /l ), with a numerical
ble for weak localization, but merely induces an energy coefficient of order unity.
average of the corresponding conductivity correction. There is one additional aspect to the magnetoresis-
In terms of effective interaction parameters g2D and tance due to electron-electron interactions that is of little
g1D , the conductivity corrections due to electron-electron experimental relevance in metals but becomes important
interactions can be written as (assuming T ) in semiconductors in the classically strong-field regime
where c > 1 (this regime is not easily accessible in
e2 T metal nanostructures because of the typically short scat-
ee = g2D ln , for lT W, (2.51a) tering time). In such strong fields only the diffuson con-
2 2 h
2 tributions to the conductivity corrections survive. Ac-
e lT
ee = 1/2 g1D , for W lT L. (2.51b) cording to Houghton et al.215 and Girvin et al.,216 the
2 h W diffuson does not modify the off-diagonal elements of the
conductivity tensor, but only the diagonal elements
Under typical experimental conditions,55 the constants
g2D and g1D are positive and of order unity. Theoreti- xy = yx = 0, xx = yy ee , (2.52)
cally, these effective interaction parameters depend in a
complicated way on the ratio of screening length to Fermi where ee is approximately field-independent (provided
wavelength and can have either sign. We do not give spin splitting does not play a role). In a channel geometry
the formulas here, but refer to the reviews by Altshuler one measures the longitudinal resistivity xx , which is
and Aronov211 and Fukuyama.212 In 2D the interaction related to the conductivity tensor elements by
correction ee shares a logarithmic temperature depen- yy
dence with the weak localization correction loc , and xx 2
xx yy + xy
both corrections are of the same order of magnitude. In
1D the temperature dependences of the two effects are ee
= 0xx + 0xx 0
2 0
xx 2
ee + order(ee ) .
different (unless T 1/2 ). Moreover, in the 1D case xx
ee loc if lT l . (2.53)
A weak magnetic field fully suppresses weak localiza-
tion, but has only a small effect on the quantum cor- Here 0xx = and xx 0
= [1 + (c )2 ]1 are the clas-
rection from electron-electron interactions. The conduc- sical results (1.26) and (1.27). In obtaining this re-
tance correction Gee contains contributions of diffuson sult the effects of Landau level quantization on the con-
type and of cooperon type. The diffusons (which give the ductivity have been disregarded (see, however, Ref.55 ).
largest contributions to Gee ) are affected by a magnetic The longitudinal resistivity thus becomes magnetic-field-
field only via the Zeeman energy, which removes the spin dependent:
degeneracy when gB B > kB T . In the systems of in- xx = (1 + [(c )2 1]ee /). (2.54)
terest here, spin splitting can usually be ignored below
1T, so the diffusons are insensitive to a weak magnetic To the extent that the B-dependence of ee can be ne-
field. Since the spin degeneracy is removed regardless of glected, Eq. (2.54) gives a parabolic negative magnetore-
the orientation of the magnetic field, the B-dependence sistance, with a temperature dependence that is that of
34
1. Magnetoelectric subbands
method. The slope of the straight line in Fig. 30 gives
g1D 1.5 in Eq. (2.51b), which is close to the value found Consider first the case of an unbounded 2DEG in a
by Choi et al.55 It should be noted, however, that this perpendicular magnetic field B = A. The Hamil-
experiment is already in the regime where the quantum tonian for motion in the plane of the 2DEG is given by
corrections are by no means small, so the perturbation
theory is of questionable validity. For this reason, and
also in view of other problems (such as the difficulty in (p + eA)2
H= , (2.55)
determining the effective channel width, the presence of 2m
channel width variations, and a frequently observed sat-
uration of the weak localization correction at low tem- for a single spin component. In the Landau gauge A =
peratures due to loss of phase coherence associated with (0, Bx, 0), with B in the z-direction, this may be written
external noise or radio-frequency interference), a quanti- as
tative analysis of the parameters obtained from the weak p2x mc2
localization and electron-electron corrections in narrow H= + (x x0 )2 , (2.56)
2m 2
channels ( and g1D ) is not fully warranted. Indeed,
most of the narrow-channel studies available today have with c eB/m and x0 py /eB. The y-momentum
not been optimized for the purpose of a detailed quan- operator py ih/y can be replaced by its eigenvalue
titative analysis. Instead, they were primarily intended hky , since py and H commute. The effect of the mag-
for a phenomenological exploration, and as such we feel netic field is then represented by a harmonic oscillator
that they have been quite successful. potential in the x-direction, with center x0 = hky /eB
37
" 2 #1/2
2 EF W W W , if lcycl > W ,
N Int arcsin + 1 (2.62a)
hc 2lcycl 2lcycl 2lcycl 2
1 EF W
N Int + if lcycl < . (2.62b)
2 hc 2
(This result is derived in Section III.A.1 in a semiclas- N kF W/. The parabolic confining potential gives
sical approximation. The accuracy is 1.) One easily N kF Wpar /4 in the weak-field limit. In the strong-
verifies that, for B Bcrit 2hkF /eW, Eq. (2.62) yields field limit B Bcrit , both potentials give the result
38
2. Guiding-center-drift resonance
FIG. 36 A brief illumination of a GaAs-AlGaAs heterostruc- tric field E V . Such guiding-center-drift resonances
ture with an interference pattern due to two laser beams are known from plasma physics,260 and the experiment
(black arrows) leads to a persistent periodic variation in the by Weiss et al. appears to be the first observation of this
concentration of ionized donors in the AlGaAs, thereby im- phenomenon in the solid state. Magnetic quantization is
posing a weak periodic potential on the 2DEG. The resulting not essential for these strong oscillations, but plays a role
spatial variation of the electron density in the 2DEG is indi-
in the transition to the Shubnikov-De Haas oscillations
cated schematically. (b) Experimental arrangement used to
produce a modulated 2DEG by means of the holographic at higher fields and in the weak oscillations in || .227,259
illumination of (a). The sample layout shown allows mea- A simplified physical picture of the guiding-center-drift
surements of the resistivity parallel and perpendicular to the resonance can be obtained as follows.111
equipotentials. Taken from D. Weiss et al., in High Mag-
netic Fields in Semiconductor Physics II (G. Landwehr, ed.). The guiding center (X, Y ) of an electron at position
Springer, Berlin, 1989. (x, y) having velocity (vx , vy ) is given by X = x vy /c ,
Y = y + vx /c . The time derivative of the guiding center
is x = E(y)/B, Y = 0, so its motion is parallel to the x-
tial grating). In appearance, the oscillations resemble axis. This is the E B drift. In the case of a strong mag-
the Shubnikov-De Haas oscillations at higher fields, but netic field and a slowly varying potential (lcycl a), one
their different periodicity and much weaker temperature may approximate E(y) E(Y ) to close the equations for
dependence point to a different origin. X and Y . This so-called adiabatic approximation cannot
The effect was not anticipated theoretically, but now be made in the weak-field regime (lcycl > a) of interest
a fairly complete and consistent theoretical picture here. We consider the case of a weak potential, such that
has emerged from several analyses.111,227,257,258,259 The eVrms /EF 1, with Vrms the root mean square of
strong oscillations in result from a resonance111 be- V (y). The guiding center drift in the x-direction is then
tween the periodic cyclotron orbit motion and the oscil- simply superimposed on the unperturbed cyclotron mo-
lating E B drift of the orbit center induced by the elec- tion. Its time average vdrift is obtained by integrating the
43
2lcycl/a (minima) = n 14 ,
electric field along the orbit 2lcycl/a (maxima) = n + 1
order(1/n), (2.67)
4
Z 2
1
vdrift (Y ) = (2B) d E(Y + lcycl sin ). (2.63) with n an integer. We emphasize that the phase shift
0 is not universal, but depends on the functional form of
For lcycl a the field oscillates rapidly, so only the drift V (y). The fact that the experimental phase shift in Fig.
acquired close to the two extremal points Y lcycl does 37 agrees so well with the theory indicates that the ac-
not average out. It follows that vdrift is large or small tual potential grating in the experiment of Weiss et al.
depending on whether E(Y + lcycl) and E(Y lcycl) have is well modeled by a sinusoidal potential. The maxima
the same sign or opposite sign (see Fig. 38). For a si- in /0 have amplitude 2 (l2 /alcycl), which for a large
nusoidal potential V (y) = 2Vrms sin(2y/a), one easily mean free path l can be of order unity, even if 1.
calculates by averaging over Y that, for lcycl a, the The guiding-center-drift resonance thus explains the sur-
mean square drift is prising experimental finding that a periodic modulation
of the Fermi velocity of order 102 can double the resis-
2 lcycl 2lcycl tivity.
hvdrift i = (vF )2 cos2 . (2.64)
a a 4 At low magnetic fields the experimental oscillations are
The guiding center drift by itself leads, for lcycl l, to damped more rapidly than the theory would predict, and,
1D diffusion with diffusion coefficient D given by moreover, an unexplained positive magnetoresistance is
Z observed around zero field in (but not in || ). Part of
2 this disagreement may be due to nonuniformities in the
D = hvdrift iet/t dt = hvdrift
2
i. (2.65)
0
potential grating, which become especially important at
44
low fields when the cyclotron orbit overlaps many mod- III. BALLISTIC TRANSPORT
ulation periods. At high magnetic fields B > 0.4 T the
experimental data show the onset of Shubnikov-De Haas A. Conduction as a transmission problem
oscillations, which are a consequence of oscillations in the
scattering time due to Landau level quantization (cf. In the ballistic transport regime, it is the scattering
Section I.D.3). This effect is neglected in the semiclassi- of electrons at the sample boundaries which limits the
cal analysis, which assumes a constant scattering time. current, rather than impurity scattering. The canoni-
cal example of a ballistic conductor is the point contact
The quantum mechanical B-dependence of also leads illustrated in Fig. 7c. The current I through the nar-
to weak-field oscillations in || , with the same periodic- row constriction in response to a voltage difference V
ity as the oscillations in discussed earlier, but of much between the wide regions to the left and right is finite
smaller amplitude and shifted in phase (see Fig. 37, where even in the absence of impurities, because electrons are
a maximum in the experimental || around 0.3 T lines up scattered back at the entrance of the constriction. The
with a minimum in ). These small antiphase oscilla- contact conductance G = I/V is proportional to the con-
tions in || were explained by Vasilopoulos and Peeters227 striction width but independent of its length. One cannot
and by Gerhardts and Zhang259 as resulting from oscilla- therefore describe the contact conductance in terms of a
tions in due to the oscillatory Landau bandwidth. The local conductivity, as one can do in the diffusive trans-
Landau levels En = (n 12 )hc broaden into a band of port regime. Consequently, the Einstein relation (1.11)
finite width in a periodic potential.261 This Landau band between the conductivity and the diffusion constant at
is described by a dispersion law En (k), where the wave the Fermi level, of which we made use repeatedly in Sec-
number k is related to the classical orbit center (X, Y ) tion II, is not applicable in that form to determine the
by k = Y eB/h (cf. the similar relation in Section III.A). contact conductance. The Landauer formula is an al-
The classical guiding-center-drift resonance can also be ternative relation between the conductance and a Fermi
explained in these quantum mechanical terms, if one so level property of the sample, without the restriction to
desires, by noticing that the bandwidth of the Landau diffusive transport. We discuss this formulation of con-
levels is proportional to the root-mean-square average of duction in Section III.A.2. The Landauer formula ex-
vdrift = dEn (k)/hdk. A maximal bandwidth thus corre- presses the conductance in terms of transmission prob-
sponds to a maximal guiding center drift and, hence, to a abilities of propagating modes at the Fermi level (also
maximal . A maximum in the bandwidth also implies referred to as quantum channels in this context). Some
a minimum in the density of states at the Fermi level elementary properties of the modes are summarized in
and, hence, a maximum in [Eq. (1.29)]. A maximal Section III.A.1.
bandwidth thus corresponds to a minimal || , whereas
the B-dependence of can safely by neglected for the
oscillations in (which are dominated by the classical 1. Electron waveguide
guiding-center-drift resonance).
We consider a conducting channel in a 2DEG (an elec-
In a 2D periodic potential (a grid), the guiding cen- tron waveguide), defined by a lateral confining potential
ter drift dominates the magnetoresistivity in both di- V (x), in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field B
agonal components of the resistivity tensor. Classi- (in the z-direction). In the Landau gauge A = (0, Bx, 0)
cally, the effect of a weak periodic potential V (x, y) the hamiltonian has the form
on xx and yy decouples if V (x, y) is separable into
p2x (py + eBx)2
V (x, y) = f (x) + g(y). For the 2D sinusoidal potential H= + + V (x) (3.1)
V (x, y) sin(2x/a) + sin(2y/b), one finds that the ef- 2m 2m
fect of the grid is simply a superposition of the effects for a single spin component (cf. Section II.F.1). Be-
for two perpendicular gratings of periods a and b. (No cause the canonical momentum py along the channel
such decoupling occurs quantum mechanically.254 ) Ex- commutes with H, one can diagonalize py and H simul-
periments by Alves et al.262 and by Weiss et al.263 con- taneously. For each eigenvalue hk of py , the hamilto-
firm this expectation, except for a disagreement in the nian (3.1) has a discrete spectrum of energy eigenvalues
phase of the oscillations. As noted, however, the phase En (k), n = 1, 2, . . ., corresponding to eigenfunctions of
is not universal but depends on the form of the periodic the form
potential, which need not be sinusoidal.
|n, ki = n,k (x)eiky . (3.2)
Because of the predominance of the classical guiding-
center-drift resonance in a weak periodic potential, mag- In waveguide terminology, the index n labels the modes,
netotransport experiments are not well suited to study and the dependence of the energy (or frequency) En (k)
miniband structure in the density of states. Magne- on the wave number k is the dispersion relation of the nth
tocapacitance measurements256,264,265 are a more direct mode. A propagating mode at the Fermi level has cutoff
means of investigation, but somewhat outside the scope frequency En (0) below EF . The wave function (3.2) is the
of this review. product of a transverse amplitude profile n,k (x) and a
45
h
I
B (Y y)dx = (n ). (3.7)
e 2
Equation (3.15) follows by combining the unitarity of the by quantum point contacts. These are short and nar-
scattering matrix t = t1 , required by current con- row constrictions in a 2DEG, with a width of the order
servation, with the symmetry t (B) = t1 (B), re- of the Fermi wavelength.6,7,59 The conductance of quan-
quired by time-reversal invariance ( and denote com- tum point contacts is quantized in units of 2e2 /h. This
plex and Hermitian conjugation, respectively). As shown quantization is reminiscent of the quantization of the Hall
by Buttiker,5,284 the symmetry (3.15) of the coefficients conductance, but is measured in the absence of a mag-
in Eq. (3.12) implies a reciprocity relation for the four- netic field. The zero-field conductance quantization and
terminal resistance: the smooth transition to the quantum Hall effect on ap-
plying a magnetic field are essentially consequences of
R, (B) = R, (B). (3.16) the equipartition of current among an integer number of
propagating modes in the constriction, each mode car-
The resistance is unchanged if current and voltage leads rying a current of 2e2 /h times the applied voltage V .
are interchanged with simultaneous reversal of the mag- Deviations from precise quantization result from nonunit
netic field direction. A special case of Eq. (3.16) is that transmission probability of propagating modes and from
the two-terminal resistance R, is even in B. In the nonzero transmission probability of evanescent (nonprop-
diffusive transport regime, the reciprocity relation for the agating) modes. Experiment and theory in a zero mag-
resistance follows from the Onsager-Casimir relation285 netic field are reviewed in Section III.B.1. The effect of
(B) = T () for the resistivity tensor (T denotes the a magnetic field is the subject of Section III.B.2, which
transpose). Equation (3.16) holds also in cases that the deals with depopulation of subbands and suppression of
concept of a local resistivity breaks down. One experi- backscattering by a magnetic field, two phenomena that
mental demonstration80 of the validity of the reciprocity form the basis for an understanding of magnetotransport
relation in the quantum ballistic transport regime will be in semiconductor nanostructures.
discussed in Section III.C. Other demonstrations have
been given in Refs.286,287,288,289 . We emphasize that
strict reciprocity holds only in the linear response limit 1. Conductance quantization
of infinitesimally small currents and voltages. Deviations
from Eq. (3.16) can occur experimentally290 due to non- (a) Experiments. The study of electron transport
linearities from quantum interference,146,291 which in the through point contacts in metals has a long history, which
case of a long phase coherence time persist down to goes back to Maxwells investigations295 of the resistance
very small voltages V > h/e . Magnetic impurities can of an orifice in the diffusive transport regime. Ballistic
be another source of deviations from reciprocity if the transport was first studied by Sharvin,296 who proposed
applied magnetic field is not sufficiently strong to reverse and subsequently realized297 the injection and detection
the magnetic moments on field reversal. The large B of a beam of electrons in a metal by means of point
asymmetry of the two-terminal resistance of a point con- contacts much smaller than the mean free path. With
tact reported in Ref.292 has remained unexplained (see the possible exception of the scanning tunneling micro-
Section IV.D). scope, which can be seen as a point contact on an atomic
The scattering matrix t in Eq. (3.15) describes elastic scale,298,299,300,301,302,303 these studies in metals are es-
scattering only. Inelastic scattering is assumed to take sentially restricted to the classical ballistic transport
place exclusively in the reservoirs. That is a reasonable regime because of the extremely small Fermi wavelength
approximation at temperatures that are sufficiently low (F 0.5 nm). Point contacts in a 2DEG cannot be fab-
that the size of the conductor is smaller than the inelastic ricated by simply pressing two wedge- or needle-shaped
scattering length (or the phase coherence length if quan- pieces of material together (as in bulk semiconductors304
tum interference effects play a role). Reservoirs thus play or metals305 ), since the electron gas is confined at the
a dual role in the Landauer-Buttiker formalism: On the GaAs-AlGaAs interface in the interior of the heterostruc-
one hand, a reservoir is a model for a current or volt- ture. Instead, they are defined electrostatically24,58 by
age contact; on the other hand, a reservoir brings inelas- means of a split gate on top of the heterostructure (a
tic scattering into the system. The reciprocity relation schematical cross-sectional view was given in Fig. 4b,
(3.16) is unaffected by adding reservoirs to the system while the micrograph Fig. 5b shows a top view of the
and is not restricted to elastic scattering.284 More realis- split gate of a double-point contact device; see also the
tic methods to include inelastic scattering in a distributed inset in Fig. 44). In this way one can define short
way throughout the system have been proposed, but are and narrow constrictions in the 2DEG, of variable width
not yet implemented in an actual calculation.293,294 0 < <
W 250 nm comparable to the Fermi wavelength
F 40 nm and much shorter than the mean free path
l 10 m.
B. Quantum point contacts Van Wees et al.6 and Wharam et al.7 independently
discovered a sequence of steps in the conductance of such
Many of the principal phenomena in ballistic trans- a point contact as its width was varied by means of the
port are exhibited in the cleanest and most extreme way voltage on the split gate (see Fig. 44). The steps are near
50
2e2 kF W
G= , in 2D. (3.20)
h
Eq. (3.20) is the 2D analogue6 of Sharvins well-known
expression296 for the point contact conductance in three
dimensions,
2e2 kF2 S
G= , in 3D, (3.21)
h 4
where now S is the area of the point contact. The num-
FIG. 45 (a) Classical ballistic transport through a point con- ber of propagating modes for a square-well lateral con-
tact induced by a concentration difference n, or electrochem- fining potential is N = Int[kF W/] in 2D, so Eq. (3.20)
ical potential difference eV , between source (s) and drain (d). is indeed the classical limit of the quantized conductance
(b) The net current through a quantum point contact is car- (3.17).
ried by the shaded region in k-space. In a narrow channel the Quantum mechanically, the current through the point
allowed states lie on the horizontal lines, which correspond
contact is equipartitioned among the 1D subbands, or
to quantized values for ky = n/W , and continuous values
for kx . The formation of these 1D subbands gives rise to a
transverse modes, in the constriction. The equiparti-
quantized conductance. Taken from H. van Houten et al., in tioning of current, which is the basic mechanism for the
Physics and Technology of Submicron Structures (H. Hein- conductance quantization, is illustrated in Fig. 45b for a
rich, G. Bauer, and F. Kuchar, eds.). Springer, Berlin, 1988; square-well lateral confining potential of width W . The
and in Nanostructure Physics and Fabrication (M. Reed 1D subbands then correspond to the pairs of horizon-
and W. P. Kirk, eds.). Academic, New York, 1989. tal lines at ky = n/W , with n = 1, 2, . . . , N and
N = Int[kF W/]. The group velocity vn = hkx /m is
proportional to cos and thus decreases with increasing
ably due to enhanced backscattering inside the constric- n. However, the decrease in vn is compensated by an
tion, either because of impurity scattering (which may be increase in the 1D density of states. Since n is pro-
enhanced306,310 due to the reduced screening in a quasi- portional to the length of the horizontal lines within the
one-dimensional electron gas72 ) or because of boundary dashed area in Fig. 45b, n is proportional to 1/ cos
scattering at channel wall irregularities. As mentioned so that the product vn n does not depend on the sub-
in Section II.A, Thornton et al.107 have found evidence band index. We emphasize that, although the classical
for a small (5%) fraction of diffuse, rather than specu- formula (3.20) holds only for a square-well lateral confin-
lar, reflections at boundaries defined electrostatically by ing potential, the quantization (3.17) is a general result
a gate. In a 200-nm-wide constriction this leads to an for any shape of the confining potential. The reason is
effective mean free path of about 200 nm/0.05 4 m, simply that the fundamental cancellation of the group
comparable to the constriction length of devices that do velocity vn = dEn (k)/hdk and the 1D density of states
not exhibit the conductance quantization.113,307 +n = (dEn (k)/dk)
1
holds regardless of the form of
(b) Theory. It is instructive to first consider clas- the dispersion relation En (k). For the same reason, Eq.
sical 2D point contacts in some detail.31,311 The ballis- (3.17) is equally applicable in the presence of a magnetic
tic electron flow through a point contact is illustrated in field, when magnetic edge channels at the Fermi level
Fig. 45a in real space, and in Fig. 45b in k-space, for a take over the role of 1D subbands. Equation (3.17) thus
small excess electron density n at one side of the point implies a continuous transition from the zero-field quan-
contact. At low temperatures this excess charge moves tization to the quantum Hall effect, as we will discuss in
with the Fermi velocity vF . The flux normally incident Section III.B.2.
on the point contact is nvF hcos (cos )i, where (x) To analyze deviations from Eq. (3.17) it is necessary to
is the unit step function and the symbol h i denotes an solve the Schrodinger equation for the wave functions in
isotropic angular average (the angle is defined in Fig. the narrow point contact and the adjacent wide regions
52
h 1
R2t = , (3.22)
2e2 Nmin
with Nmin the number of occupied subbands in the con-
FIG. 50 Four-terminal longitudinal magnetoresistance R4t striction (at the point where it has its minimum width
RL of a constriction for a series of gate voltages. The neg- and electron gas density). In weak magnetic fields such
ative magnetoresistance is temperature independent between that 2lcycl > W , the number of occupied subbands re-
50 mK and 4 K. Solid lines are according to Eqs. (3.23) and mains approximately constant [cf. Fig. 31 or Eq. (2.62)],
(2.62), with the constriction width as adjustable parameter. so R2t is only weakly dependent on B in this field regime.
The inset shows schematically the device geometry, with the For stronger fields Eq. (3.22) describes a positive magne-
two voltage probes used to measure RL . Taken from H. van toresistance, because Nmin decreases due to the magnetic
Houten et al., Phys. Rev. B 37, 8534 (1988).
depopulation of subbands discussed earlier. (A similar
positive magnetoresistance is found in a Hall bar with
a cross gate; see Ref.338 .) Why then does one find a
appear7,334 at odd multiples of e2 /h. Wharam et al.7 negative magnetoresistance in the four-terminal measure-
have demonstrated this effect in a particularly clear fash- ments of Fig. 50? Qualitatively, the answer is shown in
ion, using a magnetic field parallel (rather than per- Fig. 51, for a constriction without a potential barrier. In
pendicular) to the 2DEG. Rather strong magnetic fields a magnetic field the left-and right-moving electrons are
turned out to be required to fully lift the spin degeneracy spatially separated by the Lorentz force at opposite sides
in this experiment (about 10 T). of the constriction. Quantum mechanically the skipping
(b) Suppression of backscattering. Only a small orbits in Fig. 51 correspond to magnetic edge states (cf.
fraction of the electrons injected by the current source Fig. 41). Backscattering thus requires scattering across
into the 2DEG is transmitted through the point con- the width of the constriction, which becomes increasingly
tact. The remaining electrons are scattered back into improbable as lcycl becomes smaller and smaller com-
the source contact. This is the origin of the nonzero re- pared with the width (compare Figs. 51a,b). For this
sistance of a ballistic point contact. In this subsection we reason a magnetic field suppresses the geometrical con-
shall discuss how a relatively weak magnetic field leads to striction resistance in the ballistic regime, but not the re-
a suppression of the geometrical backscattering caused by sistance associated with the constriction in energy space,
the finite width of the point contact, while the amount which is due to the potential barrier.
of backscattering caused by the potential barrier in the These effects were analyzed theoretically in Ref.113 ,
point contact remains essentially unaffected. with the simple result
The reduction of backscattering by a magnetic field is
observed as a negative magnetoresistance [i.e., R(B) h 1 1
RL = 2 . (3.23)
R(0) < 0] in a four-terminal measurement of the longi- 2e Nmin Nwide
tudinal point contact resistance RL . The voltage probes
in this experiment113 are positioned on wide 2DEG re- Here Nwide is the number of occupied Landau levels in the
gions, well away from the constriction (see the inset in wide 2DEG regions. The simplest (but incomplete) argu-
Fig. 50). This allows the establishment of local equilib- ment leading to Eq. (3.23) is that the additivity of volt-
rium near the voltage probes, at least in weak magnetic ages on reservoirs (ohmic contacts) implies that the two-
1
fields (cf. Sections IV.A and IV.B), so that the measured terminal resistance R2t = (h/2e2 )Nmin should equal the
1
four-terminal resistance does not depend on the proper- sum of the Hall resistance RH = (h/2e2 )Nwide and the
56
3. Scattering and electron focusing FIG. 58 Exponential decay of the oscillation amplitude of
the collector voltage (normalized by the injector voltage) as
a function of injector-collector separation d (denoted by L in
Scattering events other than specular boundary scat- the text). Taken from J. Spector et al., Surf. Sci. 228, 283
tering can be largely ignored for the relatively small point (1990).
contact separations L 3 m in the experiments dis-
cussed earlier.59,80 (any other inelastic or elastic scatter-
ing events would have been detected as a reduction of the
oscillations with Bfocus -periodicity below the theoretical
estimate). Spector et al.349 have repeated the experi-
ments for larger L to study scattering processes in an
ultrahigh mobility353,354 2DEG (e = 5.5 106 cm2 /Vs). cur at B = (n/m)Bfocus , where Bfocus is given by Eq.
They used relatively wide point contacts (about 1 m) so (3.25) with L the spacing of adjacent channels. The iden-
that electron focusing was in the classical regime. In Fig. tification of the various peaks in Fig. 59 is given in the
57 we reproduce their experimental results for point con- inset. Nakamura et al.108 conclude from the rapidly di-
tact separations up to 64 m. The peaks in the focusing minishing height of consecutive focusing peaks (which re-
spectrum for a given L have a roughly constant ampli- quire an increasing number of specular reflections) that
tude, indicating that scattering at the boundary is mostly there is a large probability of diffuse boundary scatter-
specular rather than diffusive in agreement with the ing. The reason for the difference with the experiments
experiments of Ref.59 . Spector et al.349 find that the discussed previously is that the boundary in the exper-
amplitude of the focusing peaks decreases exponentially iment of Fig. 59 is defined by focused ion beam lithog-
with increasing L, due to scattering in the electron gas raphy, rather than electrostatically by means of a gate.
(see Fig. 58). The decay exp(L/L0) with L0 10 m As discussed in Section II.A, the former technique may
implies an effective mean free path (measured along the introduce a considerable boundary roughness.
arc of the skipping orbits) of L0 /2 15 m. This is
smaller than the transport mean free path derived from
the conductivity by about a factor of 2, which may point Electron focusing has been used by Williamson et al.355
to a greater sensitivity of electron focusing to forward to study scattering processes for hot electrons, with
scattering. an energy in excess of the Fermi energy, and for cool
Electron focusing by a magnetic field may also play holes, or empty states in the conduction band below the
a role in geometries other than the double-point con- Fermi level (see Ref.307 for a review). An interesting
tact geometry of Fig. 52. One example is mentioned in aspect of hot-electron focusing is that it allows a mea-
the context of junction scattering in a cross geometry surement of the local electrostatic potential drop across
in Section III.E. Another example is the experiment by a current-carrying quantum point contact,355 something
Nakamura et al.108 on the magnetoresistance of equally that is not possible using conventional resistance mea-
spaced narrow channels in parallel (see Fig. 59). Resis- surements, where the sum of electrostatic and chemical
tance peaks occur in this experiment when electrons that potentials is measured. The importance of such alterna-
are transmitted through one of the channels are focused tive techniques to study electrical conduction has been
back through another channel. The resistance peaks oc- stressed by Landauer.356
61
1. Theory
a result of inelastic scattering (elastic scattering is suf- Here N is the (B-dependent) number of occupied sub-
ficient if phase coherence does not play a role). Since bands in the point contacts, and Nwide is the number of
that region cannot drain charge (the attached contacts occupied Landau levels in the 2DEG between the point
are not connected to ground), these electrons will even- contacts. The physical origin of the simple addition rule
tually leave via one of the two point contacts. For a (3.39) is additivity of the four-terminal longitudinal re-
symmetric structure we may assume that the fraction sistance (3.23). From this additivity it follows that for
1
2 (1 Td /N ) of the injected current GV is transmitted n different point contacts in series, Eq. (3.39) generalizes
through the second point contact after equilibration. The to
total source-drain current I is the sum of the direct and n
indirect contributions: 1 h 1 X
= RL (i), (3.40)
Gseries 2e2 Nwide
I = 12 (1 + Td /N )GV. (3.36) i=1
a quantizing magnetic field, local equilibrium is reached in narrow Hall bars. Other anomalies are the last Hall
by inter-Landau level scattering. If the potential land- plateau,67,68,77,139,178,379 reminiscent of quantum Hall
scape (both in the point contacts themselves and in the plateaus, but occurring at much lower fields; the negative
2DEG region in between) varies by less than the Landau Hall resistance,77 as if the carriers were holes rather than
level separation hc on the length scale of the magnetic electrons; the bend resistance,289,306,364,380 a longitudinal
length (h/eB)1/2 , then inter-Landau level scattering is resistance associated with a current bend, which is nega-
suppressed in the absence of other scattering mechanisms tive at small magnetic fields and zero at large fields, with
(see Section IV.A). This means that the transport from an overshoot to a positive value at intermediate fields;
one point contact to the other is adiabatic. The series and more.
conductance is then simply Gseries = (2e2 /h)N for two In Refs.359 and360 we have shown that all these phe-
identical point contacts [N min(N1 , N2 ) for two differ- nomena can be qualitatively explained in terms of a
ent point contacts in series]. This expression differs from few simple semiclassical mechanisms (reviewed in Sec-
Eq. (3.39) if a barrier is present in the point contacts, tion III.E.1). The effects of quantum interference and of
since that causes the number N of occupied Landau levels quantization of the lateral motion in the narrow conduc-
in the point contact to be less than the number Nwide of tor are not essential. These magnetoresistance anomalies
occupied levels in the wide 2DEG. [In a strong magnetic can thus be characterized as classical magneto size effects
field, N (EF Ec )/hc , while Nwide EF /hc .] Adi- in the ballistic regime. In Section II.A, we have discussed
abatic transport in a magnetic field through two point classical size effects in the quasi-ballistic regime, where
contacts in series has been studied experimentally by the mean free path is larger than the channel width but
Kouwenhoven et al.373 and by Main et al.374 smaller than the separation between the voltage probes.
In that regime, the size effects found in a 2DEG were
known from work on metal films and wires. These ear-
E. Junction scattering lier investigations had not anticipated the diversity of
magnetoresistance anomalies due to junction scattering
In the regime of diffusive transport, the Hall bar ge- in the ballistic regime. That is not surprising, consider-
ometry (a straight current-carrying channel with small ing that the theoretical formalism to describe a resistance
side contacts for voltage drop measurements) is very measurement within a mean free path had not been de-
convenient, since it allows an independent determina- veloped in that context. Indeed, this Landauer-Buttiker
tion of the various components of the resistivity ten- formalism (described in Section III.A) found one of its
sor. A downscaled Hall bar was therefore a natural earliest applications268 in the context of the quenching
first choice as a geometry to study ballistic transport of the Hall effect, and the success with which the experi-
in a 2DEG.67,68,74,139,178,364 The resistances measured mental magnetoresistance anomalies can be described by
in narrow-channel geometries are mainly determined by means of this formalism forms strong evidence for its va-
scattering at the junctions with the side probes.289 These lidity.
scattering processes depend strongly on the junction
shape. This is in contrast to the point contact geom-
etry; compare the very similar results of van Wees et 1. Mechanisms
al.6 and Wharam et al.7 on the quantized conductance of
point contacts of a rather different design. The strong de- The variety of magnetoresistance anomalies mentioned
pendence of the low-field Hall resistance on the junction can be understood in terms of a few simple characteris-
shape was demonstrated theoretically by Baranger and tics of the curved trajectories of electrons in a classi-
Stone358 and experimentally by Ford et al.77 and Chang cal billiard in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic
et al.375 These results superseded many earlier attempts field.359,360 At very small magnetic fields, collimation and
(listed in Ref.360 ) to explain the discovery by Roukes et scrambling are the key concepts. The gradual widening
al.67 of the quenching of the Hall effect without model- of the channel on approaching thejunction reduces the in-
ing the shape of the junction realistically. Baranger and jection/acceptance cone, which is the cone of angles with
Stone358 argued that the rounded corners (present in a re- the channel axis within which an electron is injected into
alistic situation) at the junction between the main chan- the junction or within which an electron can enter the
nel and the side branches lead to a suppression (quench- channel coming from the junction. This is the horn col-
ing) of the Hall resistance at low magnetic fields as a limation effect329 discussed in Section III.D.1 (see Fig.
consequence of the horn collimation effect discussed in 65a). If the injection/acceptance cone is smaller than
Section III.D.1. A Hall bar with straight corners, in con- 90 , then the cones of two channels at right angles do
trast, does not show a generic suppression of the Hall not overlap. That means that an electron approaching
resistance,376,377,378 although quenching can occur for the side probe coming from the main channel will be
special parameter values if only a few subbands are oc- reflected (Fig. 65a) and will then typically undergo mul-
cupied in the channel. tiple reflections in the junction region (Fig. 65b). The
The quenched Hall effect67,77,375,379 is just one of a trajectory is thus scrambled, whereby the probability for
whole variety of magnetoresistance anomalies observed the electron to enter the left or right side probe in a
67
semiclassical theory predicts a universal behavior (for a temperature dependence, which should be much weaker
given geometry) if the resistance and magnetic field are for the classical than for the quantum effect. One would
scaled by R0 and B0 defined in Eq. (3.42). For a square- thus conclude that the fluctuations in Fig. 67a, measured
well confining potential the channel width W is the same by Ford et al.77 at 4.2 K, have a classical origin, while the
at each energy, and since B0 kF one would expect fine structure that Ford et al.385 observe only at mK tem-
the field region of quenched Hall resistance to vary with peratures (see below) is intrinsically quantum mechani-
the electron density as ns . For a more realistic smooth cal.
confining potential, W depends on EF and thus on ns The differences between the semiclassical and the
as well, in a way that is difficult to estimate reliably. In quantum mechanical models may best be illustrated by
any case, the experiments point to a systematic disap- considering once again the quenching of the Hall effect,
pearance of the quench at the lowest densities, which is which has the most subtle explanation and is the most
not accounted for by the present theory (and has been sensitive to the geometry among the magnetoresistance
attributed by Chang et al.375 to enhanced diffraction at anomalies observed in the ballistic regime. The classi-
low electron density as a result of the increase in the cal scrambling of the trajectories after multiple reflec-
Fermi wavelength). For a detailed investigation of de- tions suppresses the asymmetry between the transmission
partures from classical scaling, we refer to a paper by probabilities tl and tr to enter the left or right voltage
Roukes et al.384 As a third point, we mention the curious probe, and without this transmission asymmetry there
density dependence of the quenching observed in approx- can be no Hall voltage. We emphasize that this scram-
imately straight junctions by Roukes et al.,383 who find bling mechanism is consistent with the original findings
a low-field suppression of RH that occurs only at or near of Baranger and Stone358 that quenching requires col-
certain specific values of the electron density. The semi- limation. The point is that the collimation effect leads
classical model applied to a straight Hall cross (either to nonoverlapping injection/acceptance cones of two per-
defined by a square well or by a parabolic confining po- pendicular channels, which ensures that electrons can-
tential) gives a low-field slope of RH close to its bulk not enter the voltage probe from the current source di-
2D value. The fully quantum mechanical calculations rectly, but rather only after multiple reflections (cf. Sec-
for a straight junction376,381 do give quenching at special tion III.E.1). In this way a rather weak collimation to
parameter values, but not for the many-mode channels within an injection/acceptance cone of about 90 angu-
in this experiment (in which quenching occurs with as lar opening is sufficient to induce a suppression of the
many as 10 modes occupied, whereas in the calculations Hall resistance via the scrambling mechanism.
a straight cross with more than 3 occupied modes in the Collimation can also suppress RH directly by strongly
channel does not show a quench). reducing tl and tr relative to ts (the probability for trans-
In addition to the points of disagreement discussed, mission straight through the junction). This nozzle mech-
there are fine details in the measured magnetoresistances, anism, introduced by Baranger and Stone,358 requires a
expecially at the lowest temperatures (below 100 mK), strong collimation of the injected beam in order to af-
which are not obtained in the semiclassical approxima- fect RH appreciably. In the geometries considered here,
tion. The quantum mechanical calculations358,376,377,381 we find that quenching of RH is due predominantly to
show a great deal of fine structure due to interference of scrambling and not to the nozzle mechanism (tl and tr
the waves scattered by the junction. The fine structure each remain more than 30% of ts ), but data by Baranger
in most experiments is not quite as pronounced as in the and Stone358 show that both mechanisms can play an
calculations presumably partly as a result of a loss of important role.
phase coherence after many multiple scatterings in the There is a third proposed mechanism for the quench-
junction. The limited degree of phase coherence in the ing of the Hall effect,376,377 which is the reduction of
experiments and the smoothing effect of a finite temper- the transmission asymmetry due to a bound state in the
ature help to make the semiclassical model work so well junction. The bound state mechanism is purely quan-
even for the narrowest channels. We draw attention to tum mechanical and does not require collimation (in con-
the fact that classical chaotic scattering can also be a trast to the classical scrambling and nozzle mechanisms).
source of irregular resistance fluctuations (see Ref.360 ). Numerical calculations have shown that it is only effec-
Some of the most pronounced features in the quan- tive in straight Hall crosses with very narrow channels
tum mechanical calculations are due to transmission res- (not more than three modes occupied), and even then
onances that result from the presence of bound states in for special values of the Fermi energy only. Although
the junction.376,377,380,381,382 In Section III.E.1 we have this mechanism cannot account for the experiments per-
discussed a different mechanism for transmission reso- formed thus far, it may become of importance in future
nances that has a classical, rather than a quantum me- work. A resonant suppression of the Hall resistance may
chanical, origin. As mentioned in Section III.E.2, the also occur in strong magnetic fields, in the regime where
oscillations on the last Hall plateau observed experimen- the Hall resistance in wide Hall crosses would be quan-
tally are quite well accounted for by these geometrical tized. Such an effect is intimately related to the high-
resonances. One way to distinguish experimentally be- field Aharonov-Bohm magnetoresistance oscillations in a
tween these resonance mechanisms is by means of the singly connected geometry (see Section IV.D). Ford et
71
2. Coulomb blockade
Coulomb interactions on tunneling in semiconductor scale given by the inelastic scattering length (which in a
nanostructures. high-mobility GaAs-AlGaAs heterostructure is presum-
ably not much longer than the elastic scattering length
l 10 m). The situation is strikingly different in a
IV. ADIABATIC TRANSPORT strong magnetic field, where the selective population and
detection of edge channels observed by van Wees et al.426
A. Edge channels and the quantum Hall effect has demonstrated the persistence of adiabaticity outside
the point contact.
In this section we give an overview of the characteris- In the absence of interedge channel scattering the vari-
tics of adiabatic transport via edge channels in the regime ous edge channels at the same boundary can be occupied
of the quantum Hall effect as a background to the follow- up to different energies and consequently carry different
ing sections. We restrict ourselves here to the integer amounts of current. The electron gas at the edge of the
quantum Hall effect, where the edge channels can be de- sample is then not in local equilibrium. Over some long
scribed by single-electron states. Recent developments on distance (which is not yet known precisely) adiabatic-
adiabatic transport in the regime of the fractional quan- ity breaks down, leading to a partial equilibration of the
tum Hall effect (which is fundamentally a many-body edge channels. However, as demonstrated by Komiyama
effect) will be considered in Section IV.C. et al.427 and by others,307,428,429,430 local equilibrium is
not fully established even on macroscopic length scales
exceeding 0.25 mm. Since local equilibrium is a prerequi-
1. Introduction
site for the use of a local resistivity tensor, these findings
imply a nonlocality of the transport that had not been
Both the quantum Hall effect (QHE) and the quantized
anticipated in theories of the QHE (which are commonly
conductance of a ballistic point contact are described by
expressed in terms of a local resistivity).97
the same relation, G = N e2 /h, between the conductance
G and the number N of propagating modes at the Fermi A theory of the QHE that is able to explain anoma-
level (counting both spin directions separately). The lies resulting from the absence of local equilibrium has to
smooth transition from zero-field quantization to QHE take into account the properties of the current and volt-
that follows from this relation is evident from Fig. 48. age contacts used to measure the Hall resistance. That
The nature of the modes is very different, however, in is not necessary if local equilibrium is established at the
weak and strong magnetic fields. As we discussed in Sec- voltage contacts, for the fundamental reason that two
tion III.A.1, the propagating modes in a strong magnetic systems in equilibrium that are in contact have identi-
field consist of edge states, which interact with one of the cal electrochemical potentials. In the Landauer-Buttiker
sample edges only. Edge states with the same mode in- formalism described in Section III.A.2, the contacts are
dex are referred to collectively as an edge channel. Edge modeled by electron gas reservoirs and the resistances are
channels at opposite edges propagate in opposite direc- expressed in terms of transmission probabilities of prop-
tions. In a weak magnetic field, in contrast, the modes agating modes at the Fermi level from one reservoir to
consist of magnetoelectric subbands that interact with the other. This formalism is not restricted to zero or
both edges. In that case there is no spatial separation of weak magnetic fields, but can equally well be applied to
modes propagating in opposite directions. the QHE, where edge channels form the modes. In this
The different spatial extension of edge channels and way Buttiker could show112 that the nonideality of the
magnetoelectric subbands leads to an entirely different coupling of the reservoirs to the conductor affects the ac-
sensitivity to scattering processes in weak and strong curacy of the QHE in the absence of local equilibrium.
magnetic fields. Firstly, the zero-field conductance quan- An ideal contact in the QHE is one that establishes an
tization is destroyed by a small amount of elastic scatter- equilibrium population among the outgoing edge chan-
ing (due to impurities or roughness of the channel bound- nels by distributing the injected current equally among
aries; cf. Refs.313,316,317,407 , and408 ), while the QHE is these propagating modes (this is the equipartitioning of
robust to scattering.97 This difference is a consequence current discussed for an ideal electron waveguide in Sec-
of the suppression of backscattering by a magnetic field tion III.A.2). A quantum point contact that selectively
discussed in Section III.B.2, which itself follows from populates certain edge channels426 can thus be seen as an
the spatial separation at opposite edges of edge channels extreme example of a nonideal, or disordered, contact.
moving in opposite directions. Second, the spatial sepa-
ration of edge channels at the same edge in the case of
a smooth confining potential opens up the possibility of 2. Edge channels in a disordered conductor
adiabatic transport (i.e., the full suppression of interedge
channel scattering). In weak magnetic fields, adiabatic- After this general introduction, let us now discuss in
ity is of importance within a point contact, but not on some detail how edge channels are formed at the bound-
longer length scales (cf. Sections III.B.1 and III.D.1). ary of a 2DEG in a strong magnetic field. In Section
In a wide 2DEG region, scattering among the modes III.A.1 we discussed the edge states in the case of a nar-
in weak fields establishes local equilibrium on a length row channel without disorder, relevant for the point con-
78
3. Current distribution
given by with the measured Hall voltage of 30 mV, but the op-
tically determined value of 40 mV is somewhat larger for
el2
a reason that we do not understand.
e (x) = ens 1 m VH (x) . (4.7)
hc We have discussed this topic of the current distribu-
tion in the QHE in some detail to convince the reader
This equation follows from the Schrodinger equation in that the concentration of the potential drop (and hence
a smoothly varying electrostatic potential, so the factor of the current) near the edges can be understood from
between brackets is close to unity. Substitution of the the electrostatics of edge charges, but cannot be used to
net charge density ens + e (x) into the Poisson equation test the validity of a linear response formulation of the
gives446 QHE in terms of edge states. Indeed, edge states were
completely neglected in the foregoing theoretical analy-
+W/2
2
Z
sis, which nonetheless captures the essential features of
VH (x) = dx ln |x x | VH (x ). (4.8)
W/2 W the experiment.
2
The characteristic length N lm /a is defined in
terms of the magnetic length lm and the effective Bohr B. Selective population and detection of edge channels
radius a h2 /me2 (with the dielectric constant).
The integral equation (4.8) was solved numerically by The absence of local equilibrium at the current or volt-
MacDonald et al.446 and analytically by means of the age contacts leads to anomalies in the quantum Hall ef-
Wiener-Hopf technique by Thouless.448 Here we describe fect, unless the contacts are ideal (in the sense that each
a somewhat simpler approach,464 which is sufficiently edge channel at the Fermi level is transmitted through
accurate for the present purpose. For magnetic field the contact with probability 1). Ideal versus disordered
strengths in the QHE regime the length is very small. contacts are dealt with in Sections IV.B.1 and IV.B.2.
For example, if N = 4, lm = 11.5 nm (for B = 5 T), A quantum point contact can be seen as an extreme ex-
a = 10 nm (for GaAs with = 13 0 and m = 0.067 me), ample of a disordered contact, as discussed in Section
then = 17 nm. It is therefore meaningful to look for IV.B.3. Anomalies in the Shubnikov-De Haas effect due
a solution of Eq. (4.8) in the limit W . The result to the absence of local equilibrium are the subject of Sec-
is that VH (x) = constant ln |(x W/2)/(x + W/2)| tion IV.B.4.
if |x| W/2 , with a linear extrapolation from
|x| = W/2 to |x| = W/2. One may verify that this is
indeed the answer, by substituting the preceding expres- 1. Ideal contacts
sion into Eq. (4.8) and performing one partial integration.
The arbitrary constant in the expression for VH may be In a two-terminal measurement of the quantum Hall
eliminated in favor of the total current I flowing through effect the contact resistances of the current source and
the Hall bar, by applying Eq. (4.6) to the case of N filled drain are measured in series with the Hall resistance.
spin-split Landau levels. This gives the final answer For this reason precision measurements of the QHE are
1 usually performed in a four-terminal measurement con-
1 W x W/2 figuration, in which the voltage contacts do not carry a
VH (x) = IRH 1 + ln ln
2 x + W/2 current.445 Contact resistances then do not play a role,
W provided that local equilibrium is established near the
if |x| , (4.9) voltage contacts [or, by virtue of the reciprocity relation
2
(3.16), near the current contacts]. As we mentioned in
with a linear extrapolation of VH to 21 IRH in the in- Section IV.A, local equilibrium can be grossly violated
terval within from the edge. The Hall resistance is in the QHE. Accurate quantization then requires that ei-
RH = h/N e2 . The approximation (4.9) is equivalent for ther the current or the voltage contacts are ideal, in the
small to the analytical solution of Thouless, and is close sense that the edge states at the Fermi level have unit
to the numerical solutions given by MacDonald et al., transmission probability through the contacts. In this
even for a relatively large value /W = 0.1. subsection we return to the four-terminal measurements
In Fig. 80 the result (4.9) has been plotted (solid on a quantum point contact considered in Section III.B.2,
curve) for the parameters of the experiment by Fontein but now in the QHE regime where the earlier assumption
et al. (/W = 0.85 105 for N = 4, B = 5 T, and of local equilibrium near the voltage contacts is no longer
W = 2 mm). The agreement with experiment is quite applicable in general. We assume strong magnetic fields
satisfactory in view of the fact that the theory contains no so that the four-terminal longitudinal resistance RL of
adjustable parameters. The theoretical profile is steeper the quantum point contact is determined by the poten-
at the edges than in the experiment, which may be due tial barrier in the constriction (rather than by its width).
to the limited experimental resolution of 70 m. The Let us apply the Landauer-Buttiker formalism to the
total voltage drop between the two edges in the calcula- geometry of Fig. 81. As in Section III.B.2, the number
tion (hI/N e2 32 mV for I = 5 A and N = 4) agrees of spin-degenerate edge channels in the wide 2DEG and
82
al.427,472 have demonstrated that this is no longer true in Section III.B.2. At larger fields Shubnikov-De Haas os-
if one or more contacts are disordered. The analysis of cillations develop. The data for Vg = 0.3 V exhibit zero
their experiments is rather involved,472 which is why we minima in the Shubnikov-De Haas oscillations in RL and
1
do not give a detailed discussion here. Instead we re- the normal quantum Hall resistance RH = (h/2e2 )Nwide ,
view a different experiment,113 which shows a deviating determined by the number of Landau levels occupied in
Hall resistance in a sample with a constriction and a the wide regions (Nwide can be obtained from the quan-
singe disordered contact. This experiment can be ana- tum Hall effect measured in the absence of the constric-
lyzed in a relatively simple way,307 following the work of tion or from the periodicity of the Shubnikov-De Haas
Buttiker112 and Komiyama et al.427,470,471,472 oscillations).
The sample geometry is that of Fig. 82. In Fig. 86 the At the higher gate voltage Vg = 2.5 V, nonvanishing
four-terminal longitudinal resistance RL and Hall resis- minima in RL are seen in Fig. 86 as a result of the for-
tance RH are shown for both a small voltage (0.3 V) mation of a potential barrier in the constriction. At the
and a large voltage (2.5 V) on the gate defining the con- minima, RL has the fractional quantization predicted by
striction. The longitudinal resistance decreases in weak Eq. (4.12). For example, the plateau in RL around 2.2 T
fields because of reduction of backscattering, as discussed for Vg = 2.5 V is observed to be at RL = 2.1 k
85
As pointed out in Ref.307 , the likely explanation of the In the opposite field direction the normal Hall resistance
1
data of Fig. 86 is that one of the ohmic contacts used RH = (h/2e2 )Nwide is recovered.
to measure the Hall voltage is disordered in the sense of The assumption of a single disordered probe, plus ab-
Buttiker112 that not all edge channels have unit trans- sence of interedge channel scattering from constriction
mission probability into the voltage probe. The disor- to probe, thus explains the observation in Fig. 86 of an
dered contact can be modeled by a potential barrier in anomalously high quantum Hall resistance for large gate
the lead with a height not below that of the barrier in voltages, such that Nmin < Nwide . Indeed, the exper-
the constriction, as illustrated in Fig. 87. A net cur- imental Hall resistance for Vg = 2.5 V has a plateau
1
rent I flows through the constriction, determined by its around 2.2 T close to the value RH = (h/2e2 )Nmin (with
two-terminal resistance according to I = (2e/h)Nmins , Nmin = 2), in agreement with Eq. (4.16) if Nl2 Nmin
with s the chemical potential of the source reservoir (the at this gate voltage. This observation demonstrates the
chemical potential of the drain reservoir d is taken as a absence of interedge channel scattering over 100 m (the
zero reference). Equation (3.12) applied to the two oppo- separation of constriction and probe), but only between
site Hall probes l1 and l2 in Fig. 87 takes the form (using the highest-index channel (with index n = Nwide = 3)
86
on the properties of the contacts is only possible in the value in region II. This demonstrates that the n = 2 and
absence of local equilibrium. In contrast to the exper- n = 1 edge channels have almost fully equilibrated. A
iment by van Wees et al.,426 and in disagreement with quantitative analysis429 shows that, in fact, 92% of the
Eq. (4.20), the Hall resistance in Fig. 90 does not simply current originally injected into the n = 1 edge channel is
follow the smallest of the contact resistances of current redistributed equally over the n = 1 and n = 2 channels,
and voltage probe. This implies that the assumption of whereas only 8% is transferred to the n = 3 edge channel.
fully adiabatic transport has broken down on a length The suppression of scattering between the highest-index
scale of 100 m. n = N edge channel and the group of edge channels
In the experiment a magnetic field was applied such with n N 1 was found to exist only if the Fermi
that three edge channels were available at the Fermi level. level lies in (or near) the N th bulk Landau level. As a
The contact resistance of the injector was adjusted to qualitative explanation it was suggested429,476 that the
Ri = h/2e2 , so current was injected in a single edge chan- N th edge channel hybridizes with the N th bulk Landau
nel (n = 1) only. The gate voltage defining the collector level when both types of states coexist at the Fermi level.
point contact was varied. In Fig. 90 the contact resis- Such a coexistence does not occur for n N 1 if the
tances of injector (Ri ) and collector (Rc ) are plotted as potential fluctuations are small compared with hc (cf.
a function of this gate voltage, together with the Hall Fig. 78). The spatial extension of the wave functions of
resistance RH . At zero gate voltage the Hall resistance the edge channels is illustrated in Fig. 91 (shaded ellip-
takes on its normal quantized value [RH = 31 (h/2e2 )]. soids) for various values of the Fermi level between the
On increasing the negative gate voltage three regions of n = 3 and n = 4 bulk Landau levels. As the Fermi level
interest are traversed (labeled III to I in Fig. 90). In approaches the n = 3 bulk Landau level, the correspond-
region III edge channels 1 and 2 are completely trans- ing edge channel penetrates into the bulk, so the overlap
mitted through the collector, but the n = 3 channel is with the wave functions of lower-index edge channels de-
partially reflected. In agreement with Eq. (4.20), RH in- creases. This would explain the decoupling of the n = 3
creases following Rc . As region II is entered, RH levels and n = 1, 2 edge channels.
off while Rc continues to increase up to the 21 (h/2e2 )
quantized value. The fact that RH stops slightly short of These experiments thus point the way in which the
this value proves that some scattering between the n = 3 transition from microscopic to macroscopic behavior
and n = 1, 2 channels has occurred. On increasing the takes place in the QHE, while they also demonstrate that
gate voltage further, Rc rises to h/2e2 in region I. How- quite large samples will be required before truly macro-
ever, RH shows hardly any increase with respect to its scopic behavior sets in.
89
Shubnikov-De Haas oscillations is to be expected when side of Eq. (4.21). In the numerator, the transmission
R3t is measured with a point contact containing a suffi- probability Tsp may be replaced by the backscattering
ciently high potential barrier. This was indeed observed probability tbs 1, which is the probability that the
experimentally,428 as shown in Fig. 93. The Shubnikov- highest-index edge channel injected by the source con-
De Haas maximum at 5.2 T, for example, is found to tact reaches the point contact probe following scattering
disappear at gate voltages such that the point contact across the wide 2DEG (dashed lines in Fig. 92). With
conductance is equal to, or smaller than 2e2 /h, which these simplifications Eq. (4.21) takes the form (assuming
means that the point contact only transmits two spin- spin degeneracy)
split edge channels. The number of occupied spin-split
Landau levels in the bulk at this magnetic field value is 3. h tbs
R3t = (1 + order N 1 ). (4.22)
This experiment thus demonstrates that the Shubnikov- 2e2 N 2
De Haas oscillations result from the highest-index edge Only if tbs 1 may the backscattering probability be
channel only, presumably because that edge channel can expected to scale linearly with the separation of the two
penetrate into the bulk via states in the bulk Landau contacts p and d (between which the voltage drop is mea-
level with the same index that coexist at the Fermi level sured). If tbs is not small, then the upper limit tbs< 1 leads
(cf. Section IV.B.3). Moreover, it is found that this edge to the prediction of a maximum possible amplitude307
channel does not scatter to the lower-index edge chan-
nels over the distance of 250 m from probe p to drain h 1
Rmax = (1 + order N 1 ) (4.23)
d, consistent with the experiment of Alphenaar et al.429 2e2 N 2
In Section IV.B.1 we discussed how an ideal contact of the Shubnikov-De Haas resistance oscillations in a
at the 2DEG boundary induces a local equilibrium by given large magnetic field, independently of the length
equipartitioning the outgoing current equally among the of the segment over which the voltage drop is measured,
edge channels. The anomalous Shubnikov-De Haas ef- provided equilibration does not occur on this segment.
fect provides a direct way to study this contact-induced Equilibration might result, for example, from the pres-
equilibration by means of a second point contact between ence of additional contacts between the voltage probes,
the point contact voltage probe p and the current drain as discussed before. One easily verifies that the high-field
d in Fig. 92. This experiment was also carried out by Shubnikov-De Haas oscillations in Fig. 93 at Vg = 0.6 V
van Wees et al., as described in Ref.308 . Once again, use (when the point contact is just defined, so that the po-
was made of the double-split-gate point contact device tential barrier is small) lie well below the upper limit
(Fig. 5b), in this case with a 1.5-m separation between (4.23). For example, the peak around 2 T corresponds to
point contact p and the second point contact. It is found the case of four occupied spin-degenerate Landau levels,
that the Shubnikov-De Haas oscillations in R3t are sup- so the theoretical upper limit is (h/2e2 ) 16 1
800 ,
pressed only if the second point contact has a conduc- well above the observed peak value of about 350 . The
tance of (2e2 /h)(Nwide 1) or smaller. At larger conduc- prediction of a maximum longitudinal resistance implies
tances the oscillations in R3t return, because this point that the linear scaling of the amplitude of the Shubnikov-
contact can now couple to the highest-index edge chan- De Haas oscillations with the distance between voltage
nel and distribute the backscattered electrons over the probes found in the weak-field regime, and expected on
lower-index edge channels. The point contact positioned the basis of a description in terms of a local resistivity
between contacts p and d thus functions as a controllable tensor,20 breaks down in strong magnetic fields. Anoma-
edge channel mixer. lous scaling of the Shubnikov-De Haas effect has been
The conclusions of the previous paragraph have inter- observed experimentally457,460,466 and has recently also
esting implications for the Shubnikov-De Haas oscilla- been interpreted430 in terms of a nonequilibrium between
tions in the strong-field regime even if measured with the edge channels. A quantitative experimental and the-
contacts that do not selectively detect certain edge chan- oretical investigation of these issues has now been carried
nels only.307 Consider again the geometry of Fig. 92, in out by McEuen et al.477
the low-gate voltage limit where the point contact volt- Selective backscattering and the absence of local equi-
age probe transmits all edge channels with unit proba- librium have consequences as well for the two-terminal
bility. (This is the case of an ideal contact; cf. Sec- resistance in strong magnetic fields.307 In weak fields
tion IV.A.2.) To simplify expression (4.21) for the three- one usually observes in two-terminal measurements a su-
terminal longitudinal resistance R3t , we use the fact that perposition of the Shubnikov-De Haas longitudinal re-
the transmission and reflection probabilities Tsp , Rs , sistance oscillations and the quantized Hall resistance.
and Rp refer to the highest-index edge channel only This superposition shows up as a characteristic over-
(with index n = N ), under the assumptions of selec- shoot of the two-terminal resistance as a function of
tive backscattering and absence of scattering to lower- the magnetic field as it increases from one quantized
index edge channels discussed earlier. As a consequence, Hall plateau to the next (the plateaux coincide with
Tsp , Rs , and Rp are each at most equal to 1; thus, up minima of the Shubnikov-De Haas oscillations). In the
to corrections smaller by a factor N 1 , we may put these strong-field regime (in the absence of equilibration be-
terms equal to zero in the denominator on the right-hand tween source and drain contacts), no such superposi-
91
tion is to be expected. Instead, the two-terminal resis- the origin, corresponding to the two electrons orbiting
tance would increase monotonically from (h/2e2 )N 1 to around their center of mass. The phase shift acquired on
(h/2e2 )(N 1)1 as the transmission probability from one complete revolution,
source to drain decreases from N to N 1. We are not
e e
I
aware of an experimental test of this prediction. = dl A = Br2 , (4.24)
The foregoing analysis assumes that the length L of h h
the conductor is much greater than its width W , so edge should be an integer multiple of 2 so that
channels are the only states at the Fermi level that extend p
from source to drain. If L W , additional extended r = lm 2q, q = 1, 2, . . . . (4.25)
states may appear in the bulk of the 2DEG, whenever the
Fermi level lies in a bulk Landau level. An experiment The interparticle separation in units of the magnetic
by Fang et al. in this short-channel regime, to which our length lm (h/eB)1/2 is quantized. In the field regime
analysis does not apply, is discussed by Buttiker.386 where the fractional QHE is observed, only one spin-split
Landau level is occupied in general. If the electrons have
the same spin, the wave function should change sign when
two coordinates are interchanged. In the case considered
C. Fractional quantum Hall effect
here of two electrons, an interchange of the coordinates
is equivalent to r r. A change of sign is then ob-
Microscopically, quantization of the Hall conductance
tained if the phase shift for one half revolution is an odd
GH in fractional multiples of e2 /h is entirely different
multiple of (i.e., for an odd multiple of 2). The
from quantization in integer multiples. While the inte-
Pauli principle thus restricts the integer q in Eq. (4.25)
ger quantum Hall effect8 can be explained satisfactorily
to odd values.
in terms of the states of noninteracting electrons in a
The interparticle separation of a system of more than
magnetic field (see Section IV.A), the fractional quan-
two electrons is not quantized. Still, one might surmise
tum Hall effect478 exists only because of electron-electron
that the energy at densities ns 1/r2 corresponding to
interactions.479 Phenomenologically, however, the two ef-
an average separation r in accord with Eq. (4.25) would
fects are quite similar. Several experiments on edge chan-
be particularly low. This occurs when the Landau level
nel transport in the integer QHE,339,340,426 reviewed in
filling factor hns /eB equals 1/q. Theoretical
Section IV.B have been repeated480,481 for the fractional
work by Laughlin, Haldane, and Halperin479,486,487 shows
QHE with a similar outcome. The interpretation of Sec-
that the energy density u() of a uniform 2DEG in a
tion IV.B in terms of selective population and detec-
strong magnetic field has downward cusps at these values
tion of edge channels cannot be applied in that form to
of as well as at other fractions, given generally by
the fractional QHE. Edge channels in the integer QHE
are defined in one-to-one correspondence to bulk Landau = p/q, (4.26)
levels (Section IV.A.2). The fractional QHE requires a
generalization of the concept of edge channels that al- with p and q mutually prime integers and q odd. The
lows for independent current channels within the same cusp in u at integer is a consequence solely of Landau
Landau level. Two recent papers have addressed this level quantization, according to
problem482,483 and have obtained different answers. The
present status of theory and experiment on transport in du/dns = (Int[] + 12 )hc . (4.27)
fractional edge channels is reviewed in Section IV.C.2, Because of the cusp in u, the chemical potential du/dns
preceded by a brief introduction to the fractional QHE. has a discontinuity = hc at integer . At these
values of the filling factor an infinitesimal increase in
electron density costs a finite amount of energy, so the
1. Introduction electron gas can be said to be incompressible. The cusp
in u at fractional exists because of the Coulomb in-
Excellent high-level introductions to the fractional teraction. The discontinuity
is now approximately
QHE in an unbounded 2DEG can be found in Refs.97 e2 /lm B, which at a typical field of 6 T in
and484 . The following is an oversimplification of Laugh- GaAs is 10 meV, of the same magnitude as the Landau
lins theory479 of the effect and is only intended to intro- level separation hc B.
duce the reader to some of the concepts that play a role The incompressibility of the 2DEG at = p/q implies
in edge channel transport in the fractional QHE. that a nonzero minimal energy is required to add charge
It is instructive to first consider the motion of two in- to the system. An important consequence of Laughlins
teracting electrons in a strong magnetic field.485 The dy- theory is that charge can be added only in the form of
namics of the relative coordinate r decouples from that quasiparticle excitations of fractional charge e = e/q.
of the center of mass. Semiclassically, r moves along The discontinuity in the chemical potential equals the
equipotentials of the Coulomb potential e2 /r (this is the energy that it costs to create p pairs of oppositely charged
guiding center drift discussed in Section IV.A.2). The rel- quasiparticles (widely separated from each other), =
ative coordinate thus executes a circular motion around p 2 with the quasiparticle creation energy.
92
TAB , which for a singe edge channel is given by474,498 ered. Aharonov-Bohm oscillations due to interference of
2 the reflections at the entrance and exit of a point con-
tA tB tact, illustrated in Fig. 103, are one example of resonant
TAB =
1 rA rB exp(ie/h) reflection.292 Jain498 has considered resonant reflection
TA TB via a localized state circulating around a potential max-
= . imum, as in Fig. 106b. Such a maximum may result
1 + RA RB 2(RA RB )1/2 cos(0 + e/h)
naturally from a repulsive scatterer or artificially in a
(4.40)
ring geometry (cf. Fig. 100). Tunneling of an edge state
Here tA and rA are the transmission and reflection prob- at each of the channel boundaries through the localized
ability amplitudes through point contact A, TA |tA |2 , state occurs with probabilities TA and TB . The reflec-
and RA |rA |2 = 1 TA are the transmission and re- tion probability of the edge channel is still given by TAB
flection probabilities, and tB , rB , TB , RB denote the corre- in Eq. (4.24), but the channel conductance GC is now a
sponding quantities for point contact B. In Eq. (4.40) the decreasing function of TAB , according to
phase acquired by the electron on one revolution around
the cavity is the sum of the phase 0 from the reflec- e2
GC = (N TAB ). (4.42)
tion probability amplitudes (which can be assumed to be h
only weakly B-dependent) and of the Aharonov-Bohm
phase BS, which varies rapidly with B ( is the Quasi-periodic magnetoresistance oscillations have been
flux through the area S enclosed by the equipotential observed in narrow channels by several groups.70,496,507
along which the circulating edge state is extended). Res- These may occur by resonant reflection via one or more
onant transmission occurs periodically with B, whenever localized states in the channel, as in Fig. 106b.
0 + e/h is a multiple of 2. In the weak coupling
limit (TA , TB 1), Eq. (4.40) is equivalent to the Breit-
Wigner resonant tunneling formula (3.43). This equiv- E. Magnetically induced band structure
alence has been discussed by Buttiker,386 who has also
pointed out that the Breit-Wigner formula is more gen- The one-dimensional nature of edge channel trans-
erally applicable to the case that several edge channels port has recently been exploited in an innovative way by
tunnel through the cavity via the same bound state. Kouwenhoven et al.250 to realize a one-dimensional su-
In the case that only a single (spin-split) edge chan- perlattice exhibiting band structure in strong magnetic
nel is occupied in the 2DEG, the conductance GC = fields. The one-dimensionality results because only the
(e2 /h)TAB of the cavity follows directly from Eq. (4.40). highest-index edge channel (with the smallest guiding
The transmission and reflection probabilities can be de- center energy) has an appreciable backscattering prob-
termined independently from the individual point con- ability. The N 1 lower-index edge channels propa-
tact conductances GA = (e2 /h)TA (and similarly for gate adiabatically, with approximately unit transmission
GB ), at least if one may assume that the presence of the probability. One-dimensionality in zero magnetic fields
cavity has no effect on TA and TB itself (but only on the cannot be achieved with present techniques. That is one
total transmission probability TAB ). If N > 1 spin-split important reason why the zero-field superlattice experi-
edge channels are occupied and the N 1 lowest-index ments described in Section II.G could not provide con-
edge channels are fully transmitted, one can write clusive evidence for a bandstructure effect. The work
by Kouwenhoven et al.250 is reviewed in Section IV.E.1.
e2 e2
GC = (N 1 + TAB ), GA = (N 1 + TA ), The magnetically induced band structure differs in an in-
h h teresting way from the zero-field band structure familiar
e2 from solid-state textbooks, as we show in Section IV.E.2.
GB = (N 1 + TB ). (4.41)
h
Van Wees et al.500 have compared this simple model with
their experimental data, as shown in Fig. 105. The trace 1. Magnetotransport through a one-dimensional superlattice
in Fig. 105d has been calculated from Eqs. (4.40) and
(4.41) by using the individual point contact conductances The device studied by Kouwenhoven et al.250 is shown
in Fig. 105a,b as input for TA and TB . The flux has in the inset of Fig. 107. A narrow channel is defined in
been adjusted to the experimental periodicity of 3 mT, the 2DEG of a GaAs-AlGaAs heterostructure by two op-
and the phase 0 in Eq. (4.40) has been ignored (since posite gates. One of the gates is corrugated with period
that would only amount to a phase shift of the oscilla- a = 200 nm, to introduce a periodic modulation of the
tions). Energy averaging due to the finite temperature confining potential. At large negative gate voltages the
and voltage has been taken into account in the calcula- channel consists of 15 cavities [as in Section IV.D.2(b)]
tion. The agreement with experimental trace (Fig. 105c) coupled in series. The conductance of the channel was
is quite satisfactory. measured at 10 mK in a fixed magnetic field of 2 T, as
Resonant reflection of an edge channel can occur in a function of the voltage on the gate that defines the
addition to the resonant transmission already consid- smooth channel boundary. The results, reproduced in
101
h2 p 2
EF = (n 21 )h + , (4.51)
2M a
with the definitions (c2 + 02 )1/2 , M m 2 /02 .
In the limiting case B = 0, Eq. (4.51) reduces to the
usual condition249 that Bragg reflection occurs when the
longitudinal momentum mvy is a multiple of h/a. In
the opposite limit of strong magnetic fields (c 0 ),
Eq. (4.51) becomes
FIG. 109 Illustration of magnetically induced band structure 1/2
in a narrow channel with a weak periodic modulation of the h 2EG
confining potential V (x) (for the case V (x) 6= V (x)). The aWeff B = p , Weff 2 . (4.52)
e m02
dashed curves represent the unperturbed dispersion relation
(4.49) for a single Landau level. Skew minibands result from The effective width Weff of the parabolic potential is the
the broken time-reversal symmetry in a magnetic field. separation of the equipotentials at the guiding center en-
ergy EG EF (n 21 )hc .
The two-terminal conductance of the periodically mod-
To illustrate the formation of skew minibands in a mag- ulated channel drops by e2 /h whenever EF lies in a mini-
netically induced band structure, we consider the case of gap. If the magnetic field dependence of Weff is small,
a weak periodic modulation V1 (y) of the confining poten- then Eq. (4.52) shows that the magnetoconductance
tial V (x, y) = V0 (x) + V1 (x, y). The dispersion relation oscillations have approximately the periodicity B
En0 (k) in the absence of the periodic modulation can be h/eaWeff of the Aharonov-Bohm effect in a single unit
approximated by cell, in agreement with the calculations of Kouwenhoven
et al.250 (Note that in their experiment the Fermi energy
2
En0 (k) = (n 12 )hc + V0 (x = klm ). (4.49)
is tuned through the minigap by varying the gate voltage
The index n labels the Landau levels, and the wave rather than the magnetic field.) The foregoing analysis
number k runs from to +. The semiclassical is for a channel of infinite length. The interference of re-
approximation (4.49) is valid if the confining poten- flections at the entrance and exit of a finite superlattice
tial V0 is smooth on the scale of the magnetic length of length L leads to transmission resonances249,387 when-
lm (h/eB)1/2 . [Equation (4.49) follows from the guid- ever k = p/L, as described by Eqs. (4.51) and (4.52)
ing center energy (4.1), using the identity x kh/eB after substituting L for a. These transmission resonances
between the guiding center coordinate and the wave num- are observed by Kouwenhoven et al. as rapid oscillations
ber; cf. Section III.A.1] For simplicity we restrict our- in the conductance. The number of conductance max-
selves to the strictly one-dimensional case of one Landau ima between two deep minima from the minigap equals
level and suppress the Landau level index in what follows. approximately the number L/a of unit cells in the super-
To first order in the amplitude of the periodic modula- lattice. The number of maxima may become somewhat
tion V1 , the zeroth-order dispersion relation is modified larger than L/a if one takes into account reflections at the
only near the points of degeneracy Kp defined by transition from a narrow channel to a wide 2DEG. This
might explain the observation in Ref.250 of 16, rather
E 0 [Kp p(2/a)] = E 0 (Kp ), p = 1, 2, . . . . (4.50) than 15, conductance maxima between two minigaps in
one particular experiment on a 15-period superlattice.
A gap opens near Kp , leading to the formation of a band (b) Bloch oscillations. In zero magnetic fields, an
structure as illustrated in Fig. 109. The gaps do not oc- oscillatory current has been predicted to occur on ap-
cur at multiples of /a, as in a conventional 1D band plication of a dc electric field to an electron gas in a
structure. Moreover, the maxima and minima of two periodic potential.509 This Bloch oscillation would result
subsequent bands occur at different k-values. This im- from Bragg reflection of electrons that, accelerated by
plies indirect optical transitions between the bands if the the electric field, approach the band gap. A necessary
Fermi level lies in the gap. condition is that the field be sufficiently weak that tun-
It is instructive to consider the special case of a neling across the gap does not occur.510,511,512,513 The
parabolic confining potential V0 (x) = 12 m02 x2 in more wave number increases in time according to k = eE/h in
103
an electric field E. The time interval between two Bragg [17] J. M. Chamberlain, L. Eaves, and J. C. Portal,
reflections is 2/ak = h/eaE. The oscillatory current eds., Electronic Properties of Multilayers and Low-
thus would have a frequency V e/h, with V = aE Dimensional Semiconductor Structures. Plenum, Lon-
the electrostatic potential drop over one unit cell. Bloch don, to be published.
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[19] R. T. Bate, Sci. Am. 258, 78 (1988).
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