Quantum oscillations of dissipative resistance in crossed electric and magnetic fields

Abstract

Oscillations of dissipative resistance of two-dimensional electrons in GaAs quantum wells are observed in response to an electric current I and a strong magnetic field applied perpendicular to the two-dimensional systems. Period of the current-induced oscillations does not depend on the magnetic field and temperature. At a fixed current the oscillations are periodic in inverse magnetic fields with a period that does not depend on dc bias. The proposed model considers spatial variations of electron filling factor, which are induced by the electric current, as the origin of the resistance oscillations.

Intersubband resistance oscillations in crossed electric and magnetic fields

“…Namely the oscillations in the two-subband systems occur at high temperatures kT ≫hω c and, therefore, the total number of the electron states carrying the electric current (inside the energy interval kT) does not oscillate with the Fermi energy (in other words with the total electron density n). In this regime the SdH oscillations are damped and in single subband systems the curren-induced oscillations are absent [21]. Thus even if both kinds of observed oscillations have a common origin, the oscillations reported in this paper are not directly (simply) related to the spatial variations of the electron density δn induced by the electric current.…”

“…The 1/B periodicity of the oscillations and the magnetic field independence of the electric current I dc , inducing the oscillations at B > B c , indicates a similarity of these quantum oscillations with the current induced quantum oscillations reported recently in Ref. [21]. Below we consider a model, which is, in many respects, analogous to one described in Ref.…”

“…Recent investigations of the nonlinear transport in stronger magnetic fields reveal another kind of currentinduced resistance oscillations in electron systems with a single band occupation [21]. These oscillations occur in electric fields that are significantly smaller than the one required for the current-induced Landau-Zener transitions between Landau levels [12].…”

Dynamics of quantal heating in electron systems with discrete spectra

“…The dc-domain inelastic time τ dc in (T ) follows 1/T 3 decrease, while the time τ in is mostly proportional to 1/T 2 with a tendency to 1/T 3 at low temperatures. The observed difference may be related to effects of an electron redistribution, induced by the dc bias, which are relevant in the dc domain at low temperatures 30,41 . The redistribution mechanism is different from quantal heating and may not be active in the microwave experiments.…”

Zero-differential conductance of two-dimensional electrons in crossed electric and magnetic fields

“…Recently a strong nonlinear response of two dimensional electrons was observed in a geometry in which a nonlocal electron transport, associated with the propagation of the edge states or/and skipping orbits [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] , plays the dominant role 15 . The observation of the nonlocal nonlinear response has raised a question regarding a possibility of the significant contribution of the edge states and/or skipping orbits to the nonlinear transport of 2D electrons observed in the Hall bar geometry [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] and, thus, the applicability of the currently accepted theoretical approach 7 to the observed nonlinearity. We should note that in the Hall bar geometry a separation between the local and the nonlocal contributions to the electron conductance is a challenging problem.…”