In-Plane Magnetic Field Induced Anisotropy of 2D Fermi Contours and the Field Dependent Cyclotron Mass

The effect of strong magnetic fields parallel to GaAs/AlGaAs interface on the subband structure of a 2D electron layer is ivestigated theoretically. The system with two levels occupied in zero magnetic field is considered and the magnetic field induced depletion of the second subband is studied. The confining potential and the electron dispersion relations are calculated self-consistently, the electron- electron interaction is taken into account in the Hartree approximation.

In a 2D electron system in (001) GaAs/AlGaAs upon filling high Landau levels, it was recently observed a new class of collective states, which are recognized now to relate to the spontaneous formation of a charge density wave (``stripe phase''). Here we analyze one of the possible mechanisms of the stripe pinning along the crystallographic direction [110]--the native effective mass anisotropy of 2D electrons. It is shown that for a symmetric quantum well this anisotropy is a ...

We report on a new class of magnetoresistance oscillations observed in a high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in GaAs-Al$_x$Ga$_{1-x}$As heterostructures. Appearing in a weak magnetic field ($B<$ 0.3 T) and only in a narrow temperature range (2 K $<T<$ 9 K), these oscillations are periodic in 1/B with a frequency proportional to the electron Fermi wave vector, $k_F$. We interpret the effect as a magnetophonon resonance of the 2DEG with leaky interface-acoustic ph...

We demonstrate tuning of the Fermi contour anisotropy of two-dimensional (2D) holes in a symmetric GaAs (001) quantum well via the application of in-plane strain. The ballistic transport of high-mobility hole carriers allows us to measure the Fermi wavevector of 2D holes via commensurability oscillations as a function of strain. Our results show that a small amount of in-plane strain, on the order of $10^{-4}$, can induce significant Fermi wavevector anisotropy as large as 3....

In a quasi two-dimensional electron system with non-zero layer thickness, a parallel magnetic field (B||) can couple to the out-of-plane electron motion and lead to a severe distortion and eventual disintegration of the Fermi contour. Here we directly and quantitatively probe this evolution through commensurability and Shubnikov-de Haas measurements on electrons confined to a 40-nm-wide GaAs (001) quantum well. We are able to observe the Fermi contour disintegration phenomeno...

Two-dimensional (2D) electrons in an in-plane magnetic field become fully spin polarized above a field B_P, which we can determine from the in-plane magnetoresistance. We perform such measurements in modulation-doped AlAs electron systems, and find that the field B_P increases approximately linearly with 2D electron density. These results imply that the product |g*|m*, where g* is the effective g-factor and m* the effective mass, is a constant essentially independent of densi...

In the da Costa's thin-layer approach, a quantum particle moving in a 3D sample is confined on a curved thin interface. At the end, the interface effects are ignored and such quantum particle is localized on a curved surface. A geometric potential arises and, since it manifests due to this confinement procedure, it depends on the transverse to the surface mass component. This inspired us to consider, in this paper, the effects due to an anisotropic effective mass on a non-int...

We study the transport properties of a 2D electron gas in narrow GaAs quantum wells with AlAs/GaAs superlattice barriers. It is shown that the anisotropic positive magnetoresistance observed in selectively doped semiconductor structures in a parallel magnetic field is caused by the spatial modulation of the 2D electron gas.

Using a sensitive DC torque magnetometer we measure the orbital magnetization by sweeping the density at fixed magnetic fields on GaAs-AlGaAs heterostructures. At low temperatures strong nonequilibrium magnetization signals dominate the data. In literature the observation of nonequilibrium signals are often associated with eddy currents generated by sweeping the magnetic field. The elimination of a changing magnetic field then poses a question regarding the origin of these si...

Terahertz spectroscopy experiments at magnetic fields and low temperatures were carried out on samples of different gate shapes processed on a high electron mobility GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure. For a given radiation frequency, multiple magnetoplasmon resonances were observed with a dispersion relation described within a local approximation of the magnetoconductivity tensor. The second harmonic of the cyclotron resonance was observed and its appearance was interpreted as resu...