Anisotropic ground states of the quantum Hall system with currents

Abstract

Anisotropic states at half-filled higher Landau levels are investigated in the system with a finite electric current. We study the response of the striped Hall state and the anisotropic charge density wave (ACDW) state against the injected current using the effective action. Current distributions and a current dependence of the total energy are determined for both states. With no injected current, the energy of the ACDW state is lower than that of the striped Hall state. We find that the energy of the ACDW state increases faster than that of the striped Hall state as the injected current increases. Hence, the striped Hall state becomes the lower energy state when the current exceeds the critical value. The critical value is estimated at about 0.04-0.07 nA, which is much smaller than the current used in the experiments.