Magneto-infrared modes in InAs-AlSb-GaSb coupled quantum wells

TL;DR

This study investigates magneto-infrared modes in weakly hybridized InAs-GaSb coupled quantum wells, revealing unique absorption features at high magnetic fields that challenge existing models and suggest possible spontaneous phase separation.

Contribution

It reports the observation of a robust pair of absorption modes in weakly hybridized quantum wells, which cannot be explained by traditional hybridization models, proposing alternative explanations like phase separation.

Findings

Observed a pair of absorption modes above 14T

Modes are robust against temperature and parallel magnetic fields

Challenges existing hybridization-based explanations

Abstract

We have studied a series of InAs/GaSb coupled quantum wells using magneto-infrared spectroscopy for high magnetic fields up to 33T within temperatures ranging from 4K to 45K in both Faraday and tilted field geometries. This type of coupled quantum wells consists of an electron layer in the InAs quantum well and a hole layer in the GaSb quantum well, forming the so-called two dimensional electron-hole bilayer system. Unlike the samples studied in the past, the hybridization of the electron and hole subbands in our samples is largely reduced by having narrower wells and an AlSb barrier layer interposed between the InAs and the GaSb quantum wells, rendering them weakly hybridized. Previous studies have revealed multiple absorption modes near the electron cyclotron resonance of the InAs layer in moderately and strongly hybridized samples, while only a single absorption mode was observed in the weakly hybridized samples. We have observed a pair of absorption modes occurring only at magnetic fields higher than 14T, which exhibited several interesting phenomena. Among which we found two unique types of behavior that distinguishes this work from the ones reported in the literature. This pair of modes is very robust against rising thermal excitations and increasing magnetic fields alligned parallel to the heterostructures. While the previous results were aptly explained by the antilevel crossing gap due to the hybridization of the electron and hole wavefunctions, i.e. conduction-valence Landau level mixing, the unique features reported in this paper cannot be explained within the same concept. The unusual properties found in this study and their connection to the known models for InAs/GaSb heterostructures will be disccused; in addition, several alternative ideas will be proposed in this paper and it appears that a spontaneous phase separation can account for most of the observed features.