Interaction effects in the transport of two-dimensional holes in GaAs.

The power-law increase of the conductivity with temperature in the nominally insulating regime, recently reported for the dilute two-dimensional holes [cond-mat/0603053], is found to systematically vary with the carrier density. Based on the results from four different GaAs heterojunction-insulated-gate field-effect-transistor samples, it is shown that the power law exponent depends on a single dimensionless parameter, the ratio between the mean carrier separation and the distance to the metallic gate that screens the Coulomb interaction. This dependence suggests that the carriers form correlated state in which the interaction effects play a significant role in the transport properties.