Metastable Resistance-Anisotropy Orientation of Two-Dimensional Electrons in High Landau Levels

The metastable resistance-anisotropy orientation of two-dimensional electrons in high Landau levels was studied. It was shown that in half-filled high Landau levels, the two-dimensional electron systems possess collective phases which exhibits a strongly anisotropic resistivity tensor. The native symmetry-breaking potential responsible for orientating the anisotropic phases near half filling of high landau levels has two orthogonal local minima, one favoring the hard resistance direction along <110> and one favoring <110>. A field-cooling technique, for determining the equilibrium configuration of the anisotropy was discussed.