The quenching of compressible edge states around antidots

Abstract

We provide a systematic quantitative description of the edge state structure around a quantum antidot in the integer quantum Hall regime. The calculations for spinless electrons within the Hartree approximation reveal that the widely used Chklovskii et al. electrostatic description greatly overestimates the widths of the compressible strips; the difference between these approaches diminishes as the size of the antidot increases. By including spin effects within density functional theory in the local spin-density approximation, we demonstrate that the exchange interaction can suppress the formation of compressible strips and lead to a spatial separation between the spin-up and spin-down states. As the magnetic field increases, the outermost compressible strip, related to spin-down states starts to form. However, in striking contrast to quantum wires, the innermost compressible strip (due to spin-up states) never develops for antidots.