Evidence for a fractionally quantized Hall state with anisotropic longitudinal transport

At high magnetic fields, where the Fermi level lies in the N=0 lowest Landau level (LL), a clean two-dimensional electron system (2DES) shows numerous incompressible liquid phases which exhibit the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE; ref.1). These liquid phases do not break rotational symmetry, exhibiting resistivities which are isotropic in the plane. In contrast, at lower fields, when the Fermi level lies in the N≥2 third and several higher LLs, the 2DES exhibits a distinctly different class of collective states. In particular, near half-filling of these high LLs the 2DES exhibits a strongly anisotropic longitudinal resistance at low temperatures. These ' stripe' phases, which do not exhibit the quantized Hall effect, resemble nematic liquid crystals, possessing broken rotational symmetry and orientational order. Here we report a surprising new observation: an electronic configuration in the N=1 LL, the resistivity tensor of which simultaneously exhibits a robust fractionally quantized Hall plateau and a strongly anisotropic longitudinal resistance resembling that of the stripe phases.