Beats of the Magnetocapacitance Oscillations in Lateral Semiconductor Superlattices

TL;DR

This paper models the magnetocapacitance oscillations in a two-dimensional electron gas within lateral semiconductor superlattices, revealing beat patterns in the oscillations due to two-dimensional weak periodic potential modulation.

Contribution

It provides explicit formulas for magnetocapacitance considering magnetic broadening, highlighting the emergence of beat patterns in two-dimensional modulation not seen in one-dimensional cases.

Findings

Beats in magnetocapacitance oscillations appear with increased modulation strength.

Beat patterns are observed in the low magnetic field Weiss-oscillations regime.

Two-dimensional modulation induces phenomena absent in one-dimensional cases.

Abstract

We present calculations on the magnetocapacitance of the two-dimensional electron gas in a lateral semiconductor superlattice under two-dimensional weak periodic potential modulation in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field. Adopting a Gaussian broadening of magnetic-field-dependent width in the density of states, we present explicit and simple expressions for the magnetocapacitance, valid for the relevant weak magnetic fields and modulation strengths. As the modulation strength in both directions increase, beats of the magnetocapacitance oscillations are observed, in the low magnetic field range (Weiss-oscillations regime), which are absent in the one-dimensional weak modulation case.