2010/07/27 by B. Hackens, Frederico Martins, F. Martins +11 · 67 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advancements in Semiconductor Devices and Circuit Design #Condensed matter physics #Coulomb #Electron #Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution #Magnetic field #Magnetoresistance #Mesoscopic physics #Physics #Quantum Hall effect #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum mechanics #Quantum tunnelling #Semiconductor materials and devices #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/ncomms1038
published in Nature Communications 1(1), 39 (Nature Portfolio)
openalex publication_date 2010/07/27 · arxiv created 2010/10/21 · arxiv updated 2010/10/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In the Quantum Hall regime, near integer filling factors, electrons should only be transmitted through spatially-separated edge states. However, in mesoscopic systems, electronic transmission turns out to be more complex, giving rise to a large spectrum of magnetoresistance oscillations. To explain these observations, recent models put forward that, as edge states come close to each other, electrons can hop between counterpropagating edge channels, or tunnel through Coulomb islands. Here, we use scanning gate microscopy to demonstrate the presence of quantum Hall Coulomb islands, and reveal the spatial structure of transport inside a quantum Hall interferometer. Electron islands locations are found by modulating the tunneling between edge states and confined electron orbits. Tuning the magnetic field, we unveil a continuous evolution of active electron islands. This allows to decrypt the complexity of high magnetic field magnetoresistance oscillations, and opens the way to further local scale manipulations of quantum Hall localized states.