Integer Hall transport and filling. A clean two-dimensional electron gas at low temperature in a strong perpendicular magnetic field forms Landau levels with orbital spacing , where . Examples include semiconductor heterojunctions and inversion layers. On integer plateaus,
with integer plateau index . The density of states in one resolved Landau branch is per unit area, so the actual filling factor is
It varies continuously with density and field. Within a disorder-broadened plateau, localized states can change occupation without changing the integer number of transporting edge branches; the filling need not equal the plateau integer at every point in that interval.
At a boundary, the confining potential bends the Landau energies through the Fermi energy, giving chiral edge states, interpreted semiclassically as skipping orbits. Opposite edges carry opposite propagation directions. An ideal spin-resolved transmitted edge channel contributes ; such channels give . Chirality and suppressed backscattering between well-separated edges explain vanishing longitudinal voltage. Ideal reservoirs and appropriate probe equilibration are part of this edge-state transport model.
A gated antidot. A local repulsive gate potential depletes an island inside the Hall bar. Edge states circulate around its boundary as closed antidot orbits. When a localized orbit is weakly coupled to extended channels on opposite sides, resonance at the reservoir electrochemical potential permits backscattering and produces conductance dips on an otherwise quantized transmitting plateau. If the path instead adds a transmission route between otherwise disconnected channels, resonant peaks can occur: the sign depends on the device's tunnel connectivity and what conductance is measured. An isolated antidot too far from every conducting edge has negligible transport signature.
For the simplest opposite-edge backscattering picture with one active branch,
where branches would otherwise transmit. A gate moves the resonance through the Fermi energy by changing both confinement and orbit area. Stronger depletion of the constrictions also changes , producing broad conductance plateaus or pinch-off, with narrow resonances superposed where coupling is finite. Low temperature resolves individual resonances; thermal and tunnel broadening can merge them.
For a fixed-area single-electron orbit, a phase change of corresponds to
Sweeping gate voltage at fixed field shifts enclosed area and level energy, giving oscillatory resonance tracks. This period is not automatically set by the lithographic gate area. Charging energy, self-consistent screening and spin branches modify spacings; in particular coupled spin branches in a charging model can generate two resonances per cycle without changing the electron flux quantum.[ref]
Figure 1.
Original schematic antidot resonances on transmitting plateaus: varied coupling and gate-controlled channel opening; illustrative coordinates rather than experimental data
. Details.
No antidot dimensions, capacitances, lever arms or measured spectrum are supplied, so absolute periods and resonance voltages cannot be extracted. The sketch illustrates the mechanisms and regimes requested, rather than inventing a numerical device data set.
Improving the bare edge potential. A picture of noninteracting Landau levels simply intersecting a prescribed smooth confinement ignores the redistribution and screening of electron charge. A self-consistent electrostatic calculation combines gate and donor potentials, electron density and Coulomb interactions. Where a partially occupied Landau level has a large density response, electrons screen strongly and create a compressible strip with nearly pinned level energy. Regions with the chemical potential in a gap are incompressible and support much of the potential change. Consequently the screened edge alternates between compressible and incompressible strips, rather than preserving an arbitrary externally drawn slope. Finite temperature, disorder, exchange and edge reconstruction can require refinements beyond the simplest electrostatic model.[ref]
Fractional states and composite fermions. Very clean two-dimensional systems show plateaus at selected fractional fillings, with small longitudinal resistance and a many-electron excitation gap. Electron-electron correlations are essential; partial filling of a noninteracting Landau level is not enough. The simplest composite fermion binds two statistical flux quanta to each electron. This is a representation of correlated electron motion, not a physical solenoid attached to a particle. With , , and density , the mean effective field is
Define a signed effective filling . Then
For , filled composite-fermion levels produce . For reversed effective field write , giving ; the nontrivial fractional upper sequence starts with . If effective filling is defined as nonnegative using , retain these as separate field-direction branches instead of using the signed expression blindly. At the mean vanishes and the effective filling diverges, so it is not an integer composite-fermion Hall plateau in this simplest construction. Attaching two flux quanta preserves fermionic statistics; the emergent integer-like gaps organize a prominent sequence of fractional electronic states.[ref]
A high-mobility modulation-doped GaAs-AlGaAs electron gas is grown by molecular beam epitaxy as a clean layered semiconductor heterostructure. An undoped gallium arsenide region is followed by an undoped aluminium gallium arsenide spacer and a donor-doped barrier region, commonly with a protective cap. The closely matched crystal structures allow a high-quality heterojunction. The spacer supplies a crucial separation: the mobile electrons reside away from the ionized donors, reducing impurity scattering compared with putting the donors directly in the conducting layer.
The larger conduction band energy on the aluminium gallium arsenide side permits donor electrons to transfer into gallium arsenide. The resulting charge separation creates band bending; together with the band offset, it forms a roughly triangular quantum well at the interface. The normal-direction wavefunction is confined, while motion parallel to the interface remains approximately free:
When only the lowest confinement subband is occupied, this is a two-dimensional electron gas. It is the quantized normal motion, not a physically zero layer thickness, that makes the low-energy system two-dimensional.
Figure 1.
Remote donors supply a clean interface channel with quantized normal motion
. Details.
At zero magnetic field, one occupied spin-degenerate parabolic subband has constant density of states per area per energy, above its edge. A perpendicular field quantizes the in-plane orbital motion into Landau levels:
Here is the material's effective spin factor and is the positive elementary charge; no free-electron assumption is made for this semiconductor. Each resolved spin branch contains states per unit area. The ideal density of states becomes
with Landau-level broadening in a real sample. The Landau filling factor
counts the carrier density in units of one spin-resolved level's degeneracy. Two unresolved spin branches have twice that degeneracy; resolved branches must not each be counted twice.
Disorder localizes states in the broadened level tails, while extended states occur near level centres. As varies, occupation of localized states can change without changing the number of current-carrying edge channels. This produces a finite-width quantum Hall plateau, rather than quantization only at isolated fields. In a mobility gap, longitudinal resistivity approaches zero and the Hall magnitude is for occupied transmitting branches. When the chemical potential passes through extended states, longitudinal dissipation peaks and the Hall value changes to another plateau. A spectral density of states can remain nonzero where transport is localized. Very strong disorder can destroy the resolved quantum Hall regime; the statement is not that any amount of disorder improves it.
Figure 2.
Broadened Landau levels and an illustrative integer Hall staircase with longitudinal peaks
. Details.
The original plot is schematic, not fitted data. At fixed sheet density, increasing decreases Landau filling factor, so the Hall magnitude climbs through plateaus while longitudinal peaks separate the plateaus. The signed Hall voltage depends on carrier and probe conventions.
For the gate calculation, the target sheet density is fixed by the desired Landau filling factor:
Use top-gate density tuning in the parallel-plate approximation. The geometric capacitance per unit area is
Therefore
The gate must become more negative relative to the electron gas, reducing its density. The voltage is the change from the gate setting associated with the stated initial density; if that setting is defined as zero, it is the required gate voltage. Work-function offsets, trapped charge and quantum capacitance are neglected. An absolute voltage referenced to some other uncalibrated potential cannot be inferred from geometry alone. Numerical values use exact SI and , and .[ref]
For the subsequently specified five-channel plateau, the chemical potential between the fifth and sixth resolved branches means , not ten. The physical contact order in the PDF is along one side of the mesa. Use ideal equilibrating Ohmic contacts and the Landauer-Büttiker formula, rather than inferring a longitudinal measurement merely from the contacts being drawn on one edge.
Choose one field polarity so the chiral order is . With ,
Contacts 2 and 4 are voltage probes, so . With , this gives , , and . Hence
for this circulation. Reversing the field reverses the contact order and gives with the same voltage ordering. The resistance magnitude is ; it is not zero. Contact 2 samples the outgoing source potential and contact 4 the outgoing drain potential for the chosen chirality.
The antidot is a depleted island supporting closed quantum Hall edge states. Tunnelling between those states and opposite propagating edges can produce resonant backscattering and resistance peaks as varies. One electronic Aharonov-Bohm phase winds by when flux through a fixed effective orbit area changes by . Using the supplied area as that effective area,
With the two spin-split branches of the lowest orbital level occupied, the common Coulomb-dominated antidot oscillation model has two charge rearrangements per added flux. Both branches contribute to charge buildup; screening and their capacitive coupling can make tunnelling through the outer edge occur twice during the cycle. It then gives
This is two electron-tunnelling resonances per flux cycle, not evidence that the mobile particles have charge . The primary charging model specifically addresses this two-spin regime.[ref]
Figure 3.
Chiral reservoir potentials and the distinction between flux period and two-spin charging resonances
. Details.
The sketch shows resistance peaks in a weak-backscattering configuration, with arbitrary height and linewidth because tunnel couplings and temperature are unspecified. A two-spin count alone does not force two independent noninteracting resonance series to be exactly half a flux period apart: their relative positions also depend on spin splitting and confinement. Thus describes the stated charging-model interpretation; is the single-electron fixed-area flux period. The actual enclosed edge-orbit area can differ from the geometrically depleted area.
For bulk filling two and total forward transmission in spin-resolved units, ideal chiral probes give the longitudinal four-terminal resistance
Resonant loss of transmission therefore gives peaks. Their size, background and detailed shape cannot be calculated from the supplied area and bulk filling alone. If the gates instead make a tunnelling path that enhances forward transmission, the resonant contrast can be reversed; the plotted peak convention is explicitly the backscattering one.