Metal-insulator transition of isotopically enriched neutron-transmutation-doped ^{70}Ge:Ga in magnetic fields

Abstract

We have investigated the temperature dependence of the electrical conductivity sigma(N,B,T) of nominally uncompensated, neutron-transmutation-doped ^{70}Ge:Ga samples in magnetic fields up to B=8 T at low temperatures (T=0.05-0.5 K). In our earlier studies at B=0, the critical exponent mu=0.5 defined by sigma(N,0,0) \propto (N-N_c)^{mu} has been determined for the same series of ^{70}Ge:Ga samples with the doping concentration N ranging from 1.861 \times 10^{17} cm^{-3} to 2.434 \times 10^{17} cm^{-3}. In magnetic fields, the motion of carriers loses time-reversal symmetry, the universality class may change and with it the value of mu. In this work, we show that magnetic fields indeed affect the value of mu (mu changes from 0.5 at B=0 to 1.1 at B \geq 4 T). The same exponent mu'=1.1 is also found in the magnetic-field-induced MIT for three different ^{70}Ge:Ga samples, i.e., sigma(N,B,0) \propto [B_c(N)-B]^{mu'} where B_c(N) is the concentration-dependent critical magnetic induction. We show that sigma(N,B,0) obeys a simple scaling rule on the (N,B) plane. Based on this finding, we derive from a simple mathematical argument that mu=mu' as has been observed in our experiment.