Slow relaxation of magnetoresistance in AlGaAs-GaAs quantum well structures quenched in a magnetic field

We observed a slow relaxation of the magnetoresistance in response to an applied magnetic field in selectively doped p-GaAs-AlGaAs structures with a partially filled upper Hubbard band. We have paid special attention to excluding the effects related to temperature fluctuations. Although these effects are important, we have found that the general features of slow relaxation persist. This behavior is interpreted as related to the properties of the Coulomb glass formed by charged centers with account taken of spin correlations, which are sensitive to an external magnetic field. Variation of the magnetic field changes the numbers of the impurity complexes of different types. As a result, it affects the shape and depth of the polaron gap formed at the states belonging to the percolation cluster responsible for the conductance. The suggested model explains both the qualitative behavior and the order of magnitude of the slowly relaxing magnetoresistance.