Hysteretic microwave cyclotron resonance of a laterally confined 2 DEG

A hysteretic cyclotron resonance (CR) is discovered in a laterally confined high mobility two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures. The hysteresis and switching phenomena are observed in microwave radiation (36 GHz) transmission at temperature 1.8–25 K. It is found that the hysteresis is accompanied by long-lived, microwave-induced changes of the 2DEG density. These density changes is attributed to a modification of electron vertical transport processes in heterostructures under the microwave heating of the 2DEG. A phenomenological model based on the 2DEG density-dependent CR, describes reasonably the main experimental findings.