Observation of geometry dependent conductivity in two-dimensional electron systems

We report electrical conductivity $σ$ measurements on a range of two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) of varying linear extent. Intriguingly, at low temperatures ($T$) and low carrier density ($n_{\mathrm{s}}$) we find the behavior to be consistent with $σ\sim L^α$, where $L$ is the length of the 2DEG along the direction of transport. Importantly, such scale-dependent behavior is precisely in accordance with the scaling hypothesis of localization~[Abrahams~\textit{et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{42}, 673 (1979)] which dictates that in systems where the electronic wave function $ξ$ is localized, $σ$ is not a material-specific parameter, but depends on the system dimensions. From our data we are able to construct the "$β$-function" $\equiv (h/e^2) d \ln σ/ d \ln L$ and show this to be strongly consistent with theoretically predicted limiting values. These results suggest, remarkably, that the electrons in the studied 2DEGs preserve phase coherence over lengths $\sim~10~μ$m. This suggests the utility of the 2DEGs studied towards applications in quantum information as well as towards fundamental investigations into many-body localized phases.

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