Spin independence of the strongly enhanced effective mass in ultra-clean SiGe/Si/SiGe two-dimensional electron system.

The effective mass at the Fermi level is measured in the strongly interacting two-dimensional (2D) electron system in ultra-clean SiGe/Si/SiGe quantum wells in the low-temperature limit in tilted magnetic fields. At low electron densities, the effective mass is found to be strongly enhanced and independent of the degree of spin polarization, which indicates that the mass enhancement is not related to the electrons' spins. The observed effect turns out to be universal for silicon-based 2D electron systems, regardless of random potential, and cannot be explained by existing theories.

Spin effect on the low-temperature resistivity maximum in a strongly interacting 2D electron system.

The increase in the resistivity with decreasing temperature followed by a drop by more than one order of magnitude is observed on the metallic side near the zero-magnetic-field metal-insulator transition in a strongly interacting two-dimensional electron system in ultra-clean SiGe/Si/SiGe quantum wells. We find that the temperature [Formula: see text], at which the resistivity exhibits a maximum, is close to the renormalized Fermi temperature. However, rather than increasing along with the Fermi temperature, the value [Formula: see text] decreases appreciably for spinless electrons in spin-polarizing (parallel) magnetic fields. The observed behaviour of [Formula: see text] cannot be described by existing theories. The results indicate the spin-related origin of the effect.

Indication of band flattening at the Fermi level in a strongly correlated electron system.

Using ultra-high quality SiGe/Si/SiGe quantum wells at millikelvin temperatures, we experimentally compare the energy-averaged effective mass, m, with that at the Fermi level, m F , and verify that the behaviours of these measured values are qualitatively different. With decreasing electron density (or increasing interaction strength), the mass at the Fermi level monotonically increases in the entire range of electron densities, while the energy-averaged mass saturates at low densities. The qualitatively different behaviour reveals a precursor to the interaction-induced single-particle spectrum flattening at the Fermi level in this electron system.