Magnetic field induced Coulomb blockade in small disordered delta-doped heterostructures

Abstract

At low densities, electrons confined to two dimensions in a delta-doped heterostructure can arrange themselves into self-consistent droplets due to disorder and screening effects. We use this observation to show that at low temperatures, there should be resistance oscillations in low density two dimensional electron gases as a function of the gate voltage, that are greatly enhanced in a magnetic field. These oscillations are intrinsic to small samples and give way to variable range hopping resistivity at low temperatures in larger samples. We place our analysis in the context of recent experiments where similar physical effects have been discussed from the point of view of a Wigner crystal or charge density wave picture.