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Classical percolation fingerprints in the high-temperature regime of the integer quantum Hall effect

We have performed magnetotransport experiments in the high-temperature regime (up to 50 K) of the integer quantum Hall effect for two-dimensional electron gases in semiconducting heterostructures. While the magnetic field dependence of the classical Hall law presents no anomaly at high temperatures, we find a breakdown of the Drude-Lorentz law for the longitudinal conductance beyond a crossover magnetic field B_c ~ 1 T, which turns out to be correlated with the onset of the integer quantum Hall effect at low temperatures. We show that the high magnetic field regime at B > B_c can be understood in terms of classical percolative transport in a smooth disordered potential. From the temperature dependence of the peak longitudinal conductance, we extract scaling exponents which are in good agreement with the theoretically expected values. We also prove that inelastic scattering on phonons is responsible for dissipation in a wide temperature range going from 1 to 50 K at high magnetic fields.