Formation of Artificial Fermi Surfaces with a Triangular Superlattice on a Conventional Two-Dimensional Electron Gas.

ABSTRACT

Imposing an external periodic electrostatic potential to the electrons confined in a quantum well makes it possible to engineer synthetic two-dimensional band structures, with electronic properties different from those in the host semiconductor. Here we report the fabrication and study of a tunable triangular artificial lattice on a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure where it is possible to transform from the original GaAs band structure and a circular Fermi surface to a new band structure with multiple artificial Fermi surfaces simply by altering a gate bias. For weak electrostatic modulation magnetotransport measurements reveal multiple quantum oscillations and commensurability oscillations due to the electron scattering from the artificial lattice. Increasing the strength of the modulation reveals new commensurability oscillations of the electrons from the artificial Fermi surface scattering from the triangular artificial lattice. These results show that low disorder gate-tunable lateral superlattices can be used to form artificial two-dimensional crystals with designer electronic properties.