Magnetic-field-driven destruction of quantum Hall states in a double quantum well

Abstract

The magnetotransport of double-quantum-well structures reveals a high-magnetic-field regime in which quantum Hall states at odd-integer \ensuremath{\nu} are missing, where \ensuremath{\nu} is the number of filled energy levels. In these double wells, the \ensuremath{\nu}=odd quantum Hall states originate from the symmetric-antisymmetric energy gap. With increasing barrier thickness between the two wells, initially the magnetic field destroys only the \ensuremath{\nu}=1 state, then both the \ensuremath{\nu}=1 and \ensuremath{\nu}=3 states disappear. We attribute their destruction to the onset of interwell electron density fluctuations.