HALL-EFFECT IN A HIGHLY INHOMOGENEOUS MAGNETIC-FIELD DISTRIBUTION

Two-dimensional Hall probes are becoming increasingly popular as ''loc al'' magnetometers for ferromagnetic and superconducting materials. In many applications, the magnetic field at a sample surface varies on a length scale much smaller than the Hall probe dimensions, and data in terpretation requires a quantitative model of the Hall voltage in this situation. We present here a classical numerical model of the Hall ef fect in a strongly inhomogeneous magnetic field and show how a respons e function can be defined to calculate the Hall voltage for an arbitra ry magnetic-field distribution. The results are successfully applied t o recent scanning Hall probe microscopy data on superconducting vortic es. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.