Negative longitudinal magnetoresistances (NLMRs) have been recently observed in a variety of topological materials and often considered to be associated with Weyl fermions that have a defined chirality. Here we report NLMRs in non-Weyl GaAs quantum wells. In the absence of a magnetic field the quantum wells show a transition from semiconducting-like to metallic behaviour with decreasing temperature. We observed pronounced NLMRs up to 9 Tesla at temperatures above the transition and weak NLMRs in low magnetic fields at temperatures close to the transition and below 5 K. The observed NLMRs show various types of magnetic field behaviour resembling those reported in topological materials. We attribute them to microscopic disorder and use a phenomenological three-resistor model to account for their various features. Our results showcase a new contribution of microscopic disorder in the occurrence of novel phenomena. They may stimulate further work on tuning electronic properties via disorder/defect nano-engineering.
@article{arxiv.1810.11751,
title = {Negative longitudinal magnetoresistance in GaAs quantum wells},
author = {Jing Xu and Meng K. Ma and Maksim Sultanov and Zhi-Li Xiao and Yong-Lei Wang and Dafei Jin and Yang-Yang Lyu and Wei Zhang and Loren N. Pfeiffer and Ken W. West and Kirk W. Baldwin and Mansour Shayegan and Wai-Kwong Kwok},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.11751},
year = {2019}
}