Non-linear response of two-dimensional electron systems at low temperatures to electric and magnetic fields

The nonlinear behavior of low-dimensional electron systems has attracted a great deal of attention for its fundamental interest as well as for potentially important applications in nanoelectronics. This work focuses on experimental results related to the nonlinear behavior of two dimensional electron systems. We first observed the non-linear zero-differential resistance state (ZDRS) that occurs for highly mobile two dimensional electron systems in response to a dc bias in the presence of a strong magnetic field applied perpendicular to the electron plane is suppressed. We found that it disappears gradually as the magnetic field is tilted away from the perpendicular at fixed filling factor. Good agreement is found with a model that considers the effect of the Zeeman splitting of Landau levels enhanced by the in-plane component of the magnetic field. Furthermore, we observed that when an electric field is applied to conductors, it heats electric charge carriers. It is demonstrated that an electric field applied to a conductor with a discrete electron spectrum produces a non-equilibrium electron distribution, which cannot be described by temperature. Such electron distribution changes significantly the conductivity of the electrons in a magnetic field, and forces them into a state with a zero differential resistance. Most importantly, the results demonstrate that in general, the effective overheating in the systems with discrete spectrum is significantly stronger than the one in systems with continuous and homogeneous distribution of the energy levels at the same input power. In the last part we observed non-linear behavior in a silicon MOSFET. Measurements of the rectification of microwave radiation at the boundary between two-dimensional electron systems separated by a narrow gap on a silicon surface for different temperatures, electron densities and microwave power, were performed. A theory is proposed that attributes the rectification to the thermoelectric response due to strong local overheating by the microwave radiation at the boundary between two dissimilar 2D metals.