Volume 3 Issue 12, December 2007
Two-dimensional electron gases provide 'mini laboratories' for fundamental physics as well as the basis for the semiconductor industry. Devices are ultimately limited by the flow of electrons, and a direct visualization of their flow could lead to better designs and applications. To this end, Michael Jura and co-workers use scanning gate microscopy to observe the electrons flowing through samples with different levels of disorder. They find that although the electrons flow along narrow branches, as expected, electrons in the cleanest sample – which still include a few scattering sites – show no hard scattering from impurities and defects. Moreover, the trajectories are stable to changes in the initial injection sites and injection angle. This stability is not expected for classical chaotic motion and quantum mechanical simulations are necessary to explain the results. [Letter p841]
Editorial
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