Abstract
The general theoretical definition of an insulator is a material in which the conductivity vanishes at the absolute zero of temperature. In classical insulators, such as materials with a band gap, vanishing conductivities lead to diverging resistivities. But other insulators can show more complex behaviour, particularly in the presence of a high magnetic field, where different components of the resistivity tensor can display different behaviours: the magnetoresistance diverges as the temperature approaches absolute zero, but the transverse (Hall) resistance remains finite. Such a system is known as a Hall insulator1. Here we report experimental evidence for a quantized2 Hall insulator in a two-dimensional electron system—confined in a semiconductor quantum well. The Hall resistance is quantized in the quantum unit of resistance h/e2, where h is Planck's constant and e the electronic charge. At low fields, the sample reverts to being a normal Hall insulator.
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Acknowledgements
We thank A. Auerbach, L. P. Pryadko, E. Shimshoni and S. L. Sondhi for discussions. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, and M.H. was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
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Hilke, M., Shahar, D., Song, S. et al. Experimental evidence for a two-dimensional quantized Hall insulator. Nature 395, 675–677 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/27160
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/27160
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