RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN MAGNETOTRANSPORT THEORY

A selection of topics recently examined in the literature of normal, dissipative magnetotransport is reviewed here, principally from the perspective of the Lei-Ting balance equation approach. We employ this isothermal formalism to revisit linear and nonlinear bulk 3D magnetoresistance, discussing longitudinal impurity limited conduction and magnetophonon resonance structure. For the transverse configuration, the characteristic linear impurity magnetoresistance log-divergence is seen to be removed by nonlinearity alone, with or without screening. At high magnetic fields, prominent hot-electron magnetophonon resonance structure is discussed for transverse transport as well as thermal noise. Another principal focus of concern here is the role of Landau quantization in linear and nonlinear transport in semiconductor microstructures, particularly quantum well superlattices (Type-I and Type-II) and heterostructures, including magnetoplasmon and cyclotron resonances as well as Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations. Electron-hole drag and negative absolute minority carrier mobility are discussed. Finally, we briefly discuss the density modulated 2DEG having magnetoresistance commensurability oscillations due to the interplay of the length scales of the cyclotron radius and the modulation period (superposed as an envelope upon Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations).