Critical width of Hall incompressible strips in regularly nonuniform 2D electron systems

A formalism for determining the critical width of Hall incompressible strips, which arise in regularly nonuniform 2D electron systems in the presence of a magnetic field, is proposed. Under equilibrium conditions, this width is determined by competition between the cyclotron and Coulomb energies at distances of about the critical width of a channel with integer filling factor. The calculations are applied to interpretation of available experimental data.