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Viscous fingering and the shape of an electronic droplet in the quantum Hall regime
Oded Agam1, Eldad Bettelheim, P Wiegmann
1Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University, Givat Ram, Jerusalem, Israel 91904.
Abstract:
We show that the semiclassical dynamics of an electronic droplet, confined in a plane in a quantizing inhomogeneous magnetic field in the regime where the electrostatic interaction is negligible, is similar to viscous (Saffman-Taylor) fingering on the interface between two fluids with different viscosities confined in a Hele-Shaw cell. Both phenomena are described by the same equations with scales differing by a factor of up to 10(-9). We also report the quasiclassical wave function of the droplet in an inhomogeneous magnetic field.
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