Current distribution in magnetically confined 2DEG: semiclassical and quantum mechanical treatment

Abstract

Abstract In the ballistic regime we study both semiclassically and quantum mechanically the electron’s dynamics in two-dimensional electron gas in the presence of an inhomogeneous magnetic field applied perpendicular to the plane. The magnetic field is constant inside four separate circular regions which are located at the four corners of a square of side length larger than the diameter of the circles, while outside the circles the magnetic field is zero. We carry out the stability analysis of the periodic orbits and for given initial conditions numerically calculate the two-dimensional invariant torus embedded in the four-dimensional phase space. Applying the Bohr–Sommerfeld and the Einstein–Brillouin–Keller semiclassical quantization methods we obtain the energy levels for different magnetic field strengths. We also perform exact quantum calculations solving numerically the discretized version of the Schrödinger equation. In our calculations, we consider only those bound states that are localized to the neighborhood of the four magnetic disks. We show that the semiclassical results are in good agreement with those found from our quantum calculations. Moreover, the current distribution and the phase of the different wave functions enable us to deduce the two quantum numbers n 1 and n 2 characterizing the energy levels in the semiclassical methods. Finally, we present two examples in which the quantum state shows a similar structure to the previous states, but these are special in the following sense. One of them is a scar state localized to the neighborhood of the periodic orbit while this orbit is already unstable. In the case of the other state, the current density is circulating in two rings in opposite directions. Thus, it is not consistent with the classical motion in the neighborhood of the periodic orbit.