Valley Splitting in Si-Inversion Layers at Low Magnetic Fields

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We report novel manifestation of the valley splitting for the two valley electron system in (100) Si-inversion layers at low carrier density. We found that valley splitting causes almost 100% modulation of the Shubnikov de Haas oscillations in very low magnetic fields, almost on the bound of the quantum interference peak of the negative magnetoresistance. From the interference pattern of oscillations we determined the valley splitting in the B=0 limit which appears to vary only within a factor of 1.3 over the density range (3-7)x10¹¹/cm². We found also that level broadenings in both electron valleys differ only by < 3%. The latter result shows that the inter-valley scattering is not responsible for the strong (six fold) `metallic-like' changes of the resistivity with temperature.