The Interrelation between Incompressible Strips and Quantized Hall Plateaus

We study the current and charge distribution of a two dimensional electron gas under strong perpendicular magnetic fields within the linear response regime. We show within a self-consistent screening theory that incompressible strips with integer values of local Landau-level filling factor exist for finite intervals of the magnetic field strength $B$. Within an essentially local conductivity model, we find that the current density in these $B$ intervals is confined to the incompressible strips of vanishing local longitudinal resistivity. This leads to vanishing longitudinal and exactly quantized Hall resistance, and to a nice agreement of the calculated Hall potential profiles with the measured ones.