Magneto‐Bloch oscillations, anomalous Hall velocity and nonlinear magnetotransport in semiconductor superlattices

Abstract

We investigate transient coherent magneto-Bloch oscillations (MBO's) of electronic wave packet photo-excited in a biased semiconductor superlattice (SSL) in a crossed or tilted magnetic field, as well as temporal transition to nonlinear magnetotransport in the superlattice. The avoided crossing between the full-miniband MBO's and bottom-miniband cyclotron oscillations in SSL is described in general for tilted electric and magnetic fields. It is shown that the full-miniband MBO's in a biased SSL in a crossed magnetic field give rise to anomalous Hall velocity which is inverse to the electric field, depends in general on the excitation conditions and determines the shift of the MBO's frequency with respect to the frequency of Bloch oscillations without magnetic field. The electric-field-induced transition from the ordinary to anomalous Hall drift velocity determines the value of a peak stationary carrier velocity υ(p) and the corresponding fields. The general criterion for the value of the electric field at which the υ(p) is reached is found.