High frequency conductivity in the quantum Hall effect

Abstract

We present high frequency measurements of the diagonal conductivity sigma_xx of a two dimensional electron system in the integer quantum Hall regime. The width of the sigma_xx peaks between QHE minima is analyzed within the framework of scaling theory using both temperature T=100-700 mK and frequency f <= 6 GHz in a two parameter scaling ansatz. For the plateau transition width we find scaling behaviour for both its temperature dependence as well as its frequency dependence. However, the corresponding scaling exponent for temperature kappa=0.42 significantly differs from the one deduced for frequency scaling (c=0.6). Additionally we use the high frequency experiments to suppress the contact resistances that strongly influences DC measurements. We find an intrinsic critical conductivity sigma_c=0.17e^2/h, virtually independent of temperature and filling factor, and deviating significantly from the proposed universal value 0.5e^2/h.