Experimental study of weak antilocalization effects in a high-mobility InxGa1-xAs/InP quantum well -: art. no. 035317

The magnetoresistance associated with quantum interference corrections in a high mobility, gated InxGa1-sAs/InP quantum well structure is studied as a function of temperature, gate voltage, and angle of the tilted magnetic field. Particular attention is paid to the experimental extraction of phase-breaking and spin-orbit scattering times when weak anti-localization effects are prominent. Compared with metals and low mobility semiconductors the characteristic magnetic field B-tr = (h) over bar /4eD tau in high mobility samples is very small and the experimental dependencies of the interference effects extend to fields several hundreds of times larger. Fitting experimental results under these conditions therefore requires theories valid for arbitrary magnetic field. It was found, however, that such a theory was unable to fit the experimental data without introducing an extra, empirical, scale factor of about 2. Measurements in tilted magnetic fields and as a function of temperature established that both the weak localization and the weak antilocalization effects have the same, orbital origin. Fits to the data confirmed that the width of the low field feature, whether a weak localization or a weak antilocalization peak, is determined by the phase-breaking time and also established that the universal (negative) magnetoresistance observed in the high field limit is associated with a temperature independent spin-orbit scattering time.