Quantum critical behaviour of the plateau-insulator transition in the quantum Hall regime

Abstract

High-field magnetotransport experiments provide an excellent tool to investigate the plateau-insulator phase transition in the integral quantum Hall effect. Here we review recent low-temperature high-field magnetotransport studies carried out on several InGaAs/InP heterostructures and an InGaAs/GaAs quantum well. We find that the longitudinal resistivity ρxx near the critical filling factor νc 0.5 follows the universal scaling law ρxx(ν, T) exp(-Δν/(T/T0) κ), where Δν ν-νc. The critical exponent κ equals 0.56 0.02, which indicates that the plateau-insulator transition falls in a non-Fermi liquid universality class. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd.