The effect of metastable states of the impurities on quantized acoustoelectric current

We report a detailed experimental study of the fluctuations of acoustoelectric (AE) current induced by surface acoustic waves in a shallow-etched quantum point contact defined in a GaAs/AlxGa1−xAs heterostructure at 1.7 K. We observe that current fluctuations between two AE current plateaus are more obvious than those at the plateaus. Switching the metastable states of the impurities is considered as the physical origin of the current fluctuations.