Resistivity anisotropy of quantum Hall stripe phases

TL;DR

This paper investigates the resistivity anisotropy in quantum Hall stripe phases, providing a quantitative model that aligns well with experimental data, thereby supporting the existence of smectic stripe phases predicted by Hartree-Fock theory.

Contribution

The authors calculate the resistivity ratio dependence on filling factor, electron density, and mobility, filling a gap in previous theoretical models and confirming the stripe phase nature.

Findings

Quantitative agreement with experimental resistivity ratios.

Validation of Hartree-Fock predicted stripe phases.

Dependence of resistivity anisotropy on key parameters.

Abstract

Quantum Hall stripe phases near half-integer filling factors $\nu \ge 9/2$ were predicted by Hartree-Fock (HF) theory and confirmed by discoveries of giant resistance anisotropies in high-mobility two-dimensional electron gases. A theory of such anisotropy was proposed by MacDonald and Fisher, although they used parameters whose dependencies on the filling factor, electron density, and mobility remained unspecified. Here, we fill this void by calculating the hard-to-easy resistivity ratio as a function of these three variables. Quantitative comparison with experiment yields very good agreement which we view as evidence for the "plain vanilla" smectic stripe HF phases.