Two-dimensional transport in an in-plane magnetic field
Phys. Rev. B 114, 235121 – Published 16 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/wynl-dh5v
Abstract
A parallel in-plane magnetic field could, in principle, distinguish between two competing physical scenarios for the experimentally observed density-tuned 2D metal-insulator transition (where decreasing the carrier density leads to a crossover from an effective metal to an effective insulator): Wigner crystallization or Anderson localization. Importantly, the observation of such a density-driven metal-insulator transition alone does not uniquely determine the microscopic nature of the insulating state. Since the main scattering mechanism in 2D doped semiconductors arises from screened random charged impurities and screening in turn depends on the electronic density of states, the in-plane magnetic field could distinguish between the two by decreasing screening through spin polarization and this enhances the effective critical density for Anderson localization compared with Wigner crystallization. We give the general theory and provide results for the quantitative magnitudes of the spin polarization effect on the transition density by focusing on two recent experiments [Z. Ge et al., Nature (London) 654, 902 (2026), T. Han et al., arXiv:2604.00113], noting that the critical density may actually decrease if the dominant scattering is by short-ranged defects instead of long-ranged charged impurities. The difference between the two cases arises from whether spin polarization dominates screening (enhanced critical density) or the Fermi surface (suppressed critical density).
