HAMILTONIAN NONSEPARABILITY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES IN SEMICONDUCTOR HETEROSTRUCTURES SUBJECTED TO HIGH LONGITUDINAL MAGNETIC-FIELDS

In semiconductor heterostructures, the effective-mass dependence along the growth direction implies, in ideally coherent conditions, the redistribution of in-plane and longitudinal motion across each heterointerface. We study this effect in a resonant-tunneling structure with a three-dimensional emitter by applying a high quantizing magnetic field parallel to the current (B ‖ J) and scan the transmissivity over the in-plane energy of the electrons. We have calculated the bound level energy splitting in a magnetic field, the current-voltage and the current-magnetic field characteristics, which are compared to the experimental curves. We find that the coherent model fails for electrons with higher in-plane kinetic energies which are conserved throughout the whole tunneling process.