A metal-insulator transition in 2D: Established facts and open questions

Abstract

The discovery of a metallic state and a metal-insulator transition (MIT) in two-dimensional (2D) electron systems challenges one of the most influential paradigms of modern mesoscopic physics, namely, that "there is no true metallic behavior in two dimensions". However, this conclusion was drawn for systems of noninteracting or weakly interacting carriers, while in all 2D systems exhibiting the metal-insulator transition, the interaction energy greatly exceeds all other energy scales. We review the main experimental findings and show that, although significant progress has been achieved in our understanding of the MIT in 2D, many open questions remain.

Review article for "50 Years of Anderson Localization". A paragraph briefly describing a theory, based on the Pomeranchuk effect, has been added.

References in corpus (12)

• Metal-Insulator Transition in Disordered Two-Dimensional Electron Systems
• Spin-independent origin of the strongly enhanced effective mass in a dilute 2D electron system
• Flow diagram of the metal-insulator transition in two dimensions
• Coulomb Correlations and the Wigner-Mott Transition
• Pauli spin susceptibility of a strongly correlated two-dimensional electron liquid
• Two-dimensional metal-insulator transition and in-plane magnetoresistance in a high mobility strained Si quantum well
• Magnetization of a strongly interacting two-dimensional electron system in perpendicular magnetic fields
• Strongly enhanced effective mass in dilute two-dimensional electron systems: System-independent origin
• Self-doping instability of the Wigner-Mott insulator
• Spin polarization induced tenfold magneto-resistivity of highly metallic 2D holes in a narrow GaAs quantum well
• Temperature-dependent transport in a sixfold degenerate two-dimensional electron system on a H-Si(111) surface
• Thermodynamic properties of Fermi systems with flat single-particle spectra

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Valley-spin polarized Landau levels in a monolayer semiconductor
• Wave function multifractality and dephasing at metal-insulator and quantum Hall transitions
• Simulation of Anderson localization in two-dimensional ultracold gases for point-like disorder
• Interaction-induced metallicity in a two-dimensional disordered non-Fermi liquid
• The mechanism of spin-orbit coupling in a 2D oxide interface
• Two-dimensional system of strongly interacting electrons in silicon (100) structures
• Two dimensional electrons in (100) oriented silicon field effect structures in the region of low concentrations and high mobilities
• Mutual dipolar drag in a bilayer Fermi gas
• Magnetic instability and spin-glass order beyond the Anderson-Mott transition in interacting power-law random banded matrix fermions