https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510050601
Specific heat anomaly and adiabatic hysteresis in disordered electron systems in a magnetic field
1
Istituto di Fisica della Materia e Dipartimento di Fisica,
Università "La Sapienza" ,
piazzale A. Moro 2, 00185 Roma, Italy
2
Istituto di Fisica della Materia e Dipartimento di Fisica,
Università di Roma 3, via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146 Roma, Italy
Received:
17
July
1998
Revised:
3
September
1998
Accepted:
5
October
1998
Published online: 15 January 1999
We consider the thermodynamic behavior of a disordered interacting electron system in two dimensions. We show that the corrections to the thermodynamic potential in the weakly localized regime give rise to a non monotonic behavior of the specific heat both in temperature and magnetic field. From this effect we predict the appearance of adiabatic hysteresis in the magnetoconductance. Our results can be interpreted as precursor effect of formation of local moments in disordered electron systems. We also comment on the relevance of our analysis in three dimensional systems.
PACS: 71.30.+h – Metal-insulator transitions and other electronic transitions / 72.15.Rn – Quantum localization / 73.20.Fz – Weak localization effects (e.g., quantized states) / 73.40.Qv – Metal-insulator semiconductor structures (including semiconductor-to-insulator)
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 1999
