Acoustic Measurements of the Stripe and the Bubble Quantum Hall Phases

Abstract

We launch surface acoustic waves (SAW) along both the $<110>$ and the $<1\bar{1}0>$ directions of a Hall bar and measure the anisotropic conductivity in a high purity GaAs 2-D electron system in the Quantum Hall regime of the stripe and the bubble phases. In the anisotropic stripe phase, SAW propagating along the "easy" $<110>$ direction sense a compressible behavior (finite resistance) which is seen in standard transport measurement only if current flows along the "hard" $<1\bar{1}0>$ direction. In the isotropic bubble phase, the SAW data show compressible behavior in both directions, in marked contrast to the incompressible quantum Hall behavior seen in transport measurements. These results challenge models that assume that both the stripe and the bubble phase consist of incompressible domains and raise important questions about the role of domain boundaries in SAW propagation.

arXiv commentPublished version from New Journal of Physics

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Onset of Quantum Criticality in the Topological-to-Nematic Transition in a Two-dimensional Electron Gas at Filling Factor $\nu =5/2$
• Electron Bubbles and the Structure of the Orbital Wavefunction
• Competition of Pairing and Nematicity in the Two-Dimensional Electron Gas
• Stability of multielectron bubbles in high Landau levels
• Microscopic details of stripes and bubbles in the quantum Hall regime
• Cavity QED Control of Quantum Hall Stripes