Electronic transport and the localization length in the quantum Hall effect

Abstract

We report on recent experimental results from transport measurements with large Hall bars made of high mobility GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures. Thermally activated conductivities and hopping transport were investigated in the integer quantum Hall regime. The predominant transport processes in two dimensions are discussed. The implications of transport regime on prefactor universality and on the relation between $\rho_{xx}$ and $\rho_{xy}$ are studied. Particularly in the Landau level tails, strictly linear dependence $\delta\rho_{xy}(\rho_{xx})$ was found, with pronounced asymmetries with respect to the plateau centre. At low temperatures, Ohmic (temperature dependent) as well as non-Ohmic (current dependent) transport were investigated and analysed on the basis of variable-range hopping theory. The non-Ohmic regime could successfully be described by an effective electron temperature model. The results from either the Ohmic transport or from a comparison of Ohmic and non-Ohmic data allowed to determine the localization length $\xi$ in two different ways. The observed divergence of $\xi(\nu)$ with the filling factor $\nu$ approaching a Landau level centre, is in qualitative agreement with scaling theories of electron localization. The absolute values of $\xi$ far from the $\rho_{xx}$ peaks are compared with theoretical predictions. On one hand, discrepancies between the $\xi$ results obtained from the two experimental methods are attributed to an inhomogeneous electric field distribution. Extrapolation yields an effective width of dominant potential drop of about $100 mu$m. On the other hand, our analysis suggests a divergence of the dielectric function $\epsilon_{r} \propto \xi^{\beta}$ with $\beta \simeq 1$.