Two-dimensional electron gases in the quantum Hall regime: Analysis of the circulating current in contactless Corbino geometry

Abstract

We have investigated the magnitude of the circulating bulk current density in Corbino geometry with high-impedance capacitive contacts using a two-dimensional distributed model. For parameters suited for GaAlAs GaAs heterostructure samples we find that local current densities can attain values larger than 1 A/m, at which a breakdown of the quantum Hall effect might be expected. The circulating current is found to be sufficiently large to allow inductive detection, and we suggest this as a method to measure σ xy .