High-field electron transport of wide quantum wells under in-plane magnetic fields

High-field transport properties of a bilayer two-dimensional electron gas in a wide quantum well (QW) subjected to an in-plane magnetic field have been investigated by ensemble Monte Carlo simulations. The electron energy spectrum was calculated self-consistently. Due to the effect of Hartree potential, a coupled two-dimensional electron gas appears in the wide QW. The in-plane magnetic field induces significant modifications in bonding and antibonding subbands of the QW. The high-field transport behavior is significantly different from the low-field case. With increasing the magnetic field, the high-field drift velocity increases to its maximum value and then decreases monotonically. The magnetic-field-dependent behavior of drift velocity is qualitatively explained as the competition between the magnetic-field-induced depopulation of the antibonding subband and the electron effective mass enhancement. c 2009 American Institute of Physics. [DOI: 10.1063/1.3139288]