Current distribution and conductance quantization in the integer quantum Hall regime

Charge transport of a two-dimensional electron gas in the presence of a magnetic field is studied by means of the Keldysh-Green function formalism and the tight-binding method. We evaluate the spatial distributions of persistent (equilibrium) and transport (nonequilibrium) currents, and give a vivid picture of their profiles. In the quantum Hall regime, we find exact conductance quantization both for persistent currents and for transport currents, even in the presence of impurity scattering centres and moderate disorder.