Observation of An Anisotropic Wigner Crystal

We report a new correlated phase of two-dimensional charged carriers in high magnetic fields, manifested by an anisotropic insulating behavior at low temperatures. It appears near Landau level filling factor $ν=1/2$ in hole systems confined to wide GaAs quantum wells when the sample is tilted in magnetic field to an intermediate angle. The parallel field component ($B_{||}$) leads to a crossing of the lowest two Landau levels, and an elongated hole wavefunction in the direction of $B_{||}$. Under these conditions, the in-plane resistance exhibits an insulating behavior, with the resistance along $B_{||}$ more than 10 times smaller than the resistance perpendicular to $B_{||}$. We interpret this anisotropic insulating phase as a two-component, striped Wigner crystal.

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