Conductance fluctuations at the integer quantum Hall plateau transition

Abstract

We study numerically conductance fluctuations near the integer quantum Hall effect plateau transition. The system is presumed to be in a mesoscopic regime, with phase coherence length comparable to the system size. We focus on a two-terminal conductance G for square samples, considering both periodic and open boundary conditions transverse to the current. At the plateau transition, G is broadly distributed, with a distribution function close to uniform on the interval between zero and one in units of e^2/h. Our results are consistent with a recent experiment by Cobden and Kogan on a mesoscopic quantum Hall effect sample.

minor changes, 5 pages LaTex, 7 postscript figures included using epsf; to be published Phys. Rev. B 55 (1997)