Anisotropic conductivity and weak localization in HgTe quantum wells with a normal energy spectrum

Abstract

The results of experimental study of interference induced magnetoconductivity in narrow quantum well HgTe with a normal energy spectrum are presented. Analysis is performed by taking into account the conductivity anisotropy. It is shown that the fitting parameter ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{\ensuremath{\phi}}$ corresponding to the phase relaxation time increases in magnitude with the increasing conductivity ($\ensuremath{\sigma}$) and decreasing temperature following the $1/T$ law. Such a behavior is analogous to that observed in the usual two-dimensional systems with a simple energy spectrum and corresponds to the inelasticity of electron-electron interaction as the main mechanism of the phase relaxation. However, it drastically differs from that observed in the wide HgTe quantum wells with the inverted spectrum, in which ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{\ensuremath{\phi}}$, being obtained by the same way, is practically independent of $\ensuremath{\sigma}$. It is presumed that a different structure of the electron multicomponent wave function for the inverted and normal quantum wells could be the reason for such a discrepancy.