Reconstruction of the spatial structure of current filaments in n‐GaAs in a magnetic field

Abstract

The spatial pattern of current filaments generated by impurity breakdown has been investigated in a semiconductor for the first time as a function of the magnetic field. Large asymmetries of shallow impurity excited‐state population were observed occurring at opposite edges of a filament normal to the magnetic field. Deformation of filament boundaries evolves at very low field strengths being comparably small to those which destabilize current flow yielding current fluctuation and chaos.