Comment on “Spin splitting in modulation-dopedAlxGa1−xN∕GaNheterostructures”

Abstract

In a recent paper, Lo et al. [Phys. Rev. B 65, 161306 (2002)] reported measurements of the longitudinal magnetoresistance ${R}_{xx}$ of the two-dimensional electron gas in ${\mathrm{Al}}_{x}{\mathrm{Ga}}_{1\ensuremath{-}x}\mathrm{N}∕\mathrm{Ga}\mathrm{N}$ heterostructures. The main observation of that work was that two oscillations beat each other, which was interpreted as a zero-field spin-splitting effect and yielded that the spin-splitting energy was equal to $9.0\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{meV}$. In this Comment, it is argued that there might be a different interpretation possible based on magnetointersubband scattering to explain the beating oscillations.