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The results of systematic experimental studies of quantum oscillations of resistivity, Hall coefficient and capacitance in GaAs and In$_x$Ga$_{1-x}$As quantum wells (QWs) with a simple electron spectrum and HgTe QWs with a complicated non-parabolic spectrum and strong spin-orbit interaction are reported. A striking result is the ratio of the amplitudes of the resistance and Hall coefficient oscillations. In GaAs QW with a simple spectrum characterized by negligibly small Zeeman and spin-orbit splitting, the ratio of amplitudes is close to that predicted theoretically. In HgTe QWs, this ratio is very different and behaves differently in QWs with normal and inverted electron spectra. In HgTe WQs with a normal spectrum, it tends to a theoretical value with an increase of the filling factor ($N$), while for HgTe QWs with an inverted spectrum, it differs significantly from the theoretical one for all available $N$. It is assumed that such a difference in the ratio of amplitudes in GaAs and HgTe QWs is due not to the peculiarities of the energy spectrum of HgTe, but to the peculiarities of electron scattering due to spin-orbit interaction with the potential of the scatterers. This assumption is justified by analysis of experimental results obtained for a heterostructure with a In$_{0.2}$Ga$_{0.8}$As QW, which spectrum is very close to the GaAs QW spectrum, but characterizes by much stronger spin-orbit splitting value. It has been found that the positions of the resistance and capacitance oscillations, the difference between the phases of the resistance and Hall coefficient oscillations and its $N$ dependence are close to those observed in GaAs QW. At the same time the ratio of the amplitude of the resistance oscillations to the Hall coefficient oscillations and its $N$ dependence differs very strongly and they are close to that observed in HgTe quantum wells., Comment: 11 pages, 14 figures

A magnetotransport and quantum capacitance of the two-dimensional electron gas in HgTe/Cd$_x$Hg$_{1-x}$Te quantum wells of a width ($20.2-46.0$)~nm are experimentally investigated. It is shown that the first energy subband of spatial quantization is split due to the spin-orbit interaction and the split branches are single-spin, therewith the splitting strength increases with the increase of the quantum well width. The electron effective masses in the branches are close to each other within the actual density range. Magneto-intersubband oscillations (MISO) observed in the structures under study exhibit the growing amplitude with the increasing electron density that contradicts to the expected decrease of wave function overlap for the rectangular quantum well. To interpret the data obtained, we have used a self-consistent approach to calculate the electron energy spectrum and the wave function within framework of the \emph{kP}-model. It has been in particular shown that the MISO amplitude increase results from the increasing overlap of the wave functions due to their shift from the gate electrode with the gate voltage increase known as phenomenon of the negative electron polarizability. The results obtained from the transport experiments are supported by quantum capacitance measurements., Comment: 12 pages, 15 figures

The polarizability of electrons occupying the lowest subband of spatial quantization in CdTe/Cd$_x$Hg$_{1-x}$Te/CdTe quantum wells is calculated. It is shown that polarizability in the quantum well without cadmium is negative, i.e., the displacement of an electron in an electric field applied perpendicularly to the quantum well plane is opposite to the force acting on it. The negative polarizability of 2D electrons can reduce the dielectric constant of quantum wells by up to $(10-15)$ percent., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

The energy spectrum of the conduction band in HgTe/Cd$_x$Hg$_{1-x}$Te quantum wells of a width $d=(4.6-20.2)$ nm has been experimentally studied in a wide range of electron density. For this purpose, the electron density dependence of the effective mass was measured by two methods: by analyzing the temperature dependence of the Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations and by means of the quantum capacitance measurements. There was shown that the effective mass obtained for the structures with $d(7-8)$ nm, the experimental effective mass becomes noticeably less than the calculated ones. This difference increases with the electron density decrease, i.e., with lowering the Fermi energy; the maximal difference between the theory and experiment is achieved at $d = (15-18)$ nm, where the ratio between the calculated and experimental masses reaches the value of two and begins to decrease with a further $d$ increase. We assume that observed behavior of the electron effective mass results from the spectrum renormalization due to electron-electron interaction., Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures

The electron-electron interaction quantum correction to the conductivity of the gated double well Al$_x$Ga$_{1-x}$As/GaAs structures is investigated experimentally. The analysis of the temperature and magnetic field dependences of the conductivity tensor allows us to obtain reliably the diffusion part of the interaction correction for the regimes when the structure is balanced and when only one quantum well is occupied. The surprising result is that the interaction correction does not reveal resonant behavior; it is practically the same for both regimes., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We study the electron-electron interaction contribution to the conductivity of two-dimensional In$_{0.2}$Ga$_{0.8}$As electron systems in the diffusion regime over the wide conductivity range, $\sigma\simeq(1-150) G_0$, where $G_0=e^2/(2\pi^2\hbar)$. We show that the data are well described within the framework of the one-loop approximation of the renormalization group (RG) theory when the conductivity is relatively high, $\sigma \gtrsim 15 G_0$. At lower conductivity, the experimental results are found to be in drastic disagreement with the predictions of this theory. The theory predicts much stronger renormalization of the Landau's Fermi liquid amplitude, which controls the interaction in the triplet channel, than that observed experimentally. A further contradiction is that the experimental value of the interaction contribution does not practically depend on the magnetic field, whereas the RG theory forecasts its strong decrease due to decreasing diagonal component of the conductivity tensor in the growing magnetic field., Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures

Results of experimental study of the weak localization phenomenon in 2D system with artificial inhomogeneity of potential relief are presented. It is shown that the shape of the magnetoconductivity curve is determined by the statistics of closed paths. The area distribution function of closed paths has been obtained using the Fourier transformation of the magnetoconductivity curves taken at different temperatures. The experimental results are found in a qualitative agreement with the results of computer simulation., Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures

The interference induced transverse negative magnetoresistance of GaAs/InGaAs/GaAs quantum well heterostructures has been studied in the presence of strong in-plane magnetic field. It is shown that effect of in-plane magnetic field is determined by the interface roughness and strongly depends on the relationship between mean free path, phase breaking length and roughness correlation length. Analysis of the experimental results allows us to estimate parameters of short- and long-range correlated roughness which have been found in a good agreement with atomic force microscopy data obtained for just the same samples., Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, REVTeX 4

The temperature and gate voltage dependences of the phase breaking time are studied experimentally in GaAs/InGaAs heterostructures with single quantum well. It is shown that appearance of states at the Fermi energy in the doped layers leads to a significant decrease of the phase breaking time of the carriers in quantum well and to saturation of the phase breaking time at low temperature., Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures

There was shown that Fourier transform of the negative magnetoresistance (NMR) which is due to interference correction to the conductivity contains the information about the area distribution function of the closed paths and about area dependence of the mean length of closed paths \bar{L}(S). Based on this line of attack we suggest the method of analysis of NMR and use it for data treatment of the NMR in 2D structure with doped barrier. There was shown that in structure investigated \bar{L}(S)dependence is determined by the scattering anisotropy., Comment: PostScript-format with figures

The results of experimental and theoretical studies of zero-bias anomaly (ZBA) in the Pb-oxide-n-InAs tunnel structures in magnetic field up to 6T are presented. A specific feature of the structures is a coexistence of the 2D and 3D states at the Fermi energy near the semiconductor surface. The dependence of the measured ZBA amplitude on the strength and orientation of the applied magnetic field is in agreement with the proposed theoretical model. According to this model, electrons tunnel into 2D states, and move diffusively in the 2D layer, whereas the main contribution to the screening comes from 3D electrons., Comment: 8 double-column pages, REVTeX, 9 eps figures embedded with epsf, published version