Cyclotron resonance of correlated electrons in semiconductor heterostructures

TL;DR

This paper investigates the cyclotron resonance absorption of two-dimensional electrons in semiconductor heterostructures under high magnetic fields, explicitly considering Coulomb correlations and impurity scattering, with results aligning with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a theory that accounts for Coulomb correlation effects via Wigner phonons in cyclotron resonance, extending understanding of long-range impurity scattering in 2D electron systems.

Findings

Quantitative agreement of linewidth with experiments in Wigner crystal regime

Doubling of resonance peaks similar to charge density wave theory

Pinning mode independence from substrate compressibility

Abstract

The cyclotron resonance absorption of two-dimensional electrons in semiconductor heterostructures in high magnetic fields is investigated. It is assumed that the ionized impurity potential is a dominant scattering mechanism, and the theory explicitly takes the Coulomb correlation effect into account through the Wigner phonons. The cyclotron resonance linewidth is in quantitative agreement with the experiment in the Wigner crystal regime at T=4.2K. Similar to the cyclotron resonance theory of the charge density waves pinned by short-range impurities, the present results for the long-range scattering also show the doubling of the resonance peaks. However, unlike the case of the charge density waves, our theory gives the pinning mode independent of the bulk compressibility of the substrate materials.