Measurement of the high-field Hall effect by an inductive method

Abstract

Bowers, Legendy & Rose (1961) have recently found that when a strong magnetic field is applied to a pure metal sample at 4.2 °K, the mutual inductance between two coils surrounding the sample shows a resonant peak at a frequency (typically of order 100 c/s) which varies with the applied field strength. We show that this effect makes possible accurate measurements of the Hall coefficient in the high-field region, where the transverse electric field due to the Hall effect exceeds the longitudinal resistive field. The theory of the effect has been developed for a sample in the form of a thin rectangular plate, and verified in some detail experimentally. The effect has been used to measure the Hall coefficients of Li, Na, K, A1 and In at 4.2 °K. Except for Li, where our data do not extend to the high-field region, we find that the high-field Hall coefficients of all these metals are about 5 % larger in magnitude than the theoretical high-field values. We have also observed the effect in InSb at room temperature, where it occurs at a frequency of order 100 Mc/s and may have practical applications.