Transport measurements of high-mohility two-dimensional electron systems at low temperatures have
revealed a large resistance anisotropy around half-filling of excited Landau levels. These results have been
attributed to electronic stripe-phase formation with spontaneously broken orientational symmetry. Mechanisms
which are known to break the orientational symmetry include poorly-understood crystal structure effects and an
in-plane magnetic field, $B_{||}$. Here we report that a large $B_{||}$ also causes the transport anisotropy to persist up to much
higher temperatures. In this regime, we find that the anisotropic resistance scales sublinearly with $B_{||}/T$. These
observations support the proposal that the transition from anisotropic to isotropic transport reflects a liquid crystal
phase transition where local stripe order persists even in the isotropic regime.
Strongly anisotropic transport in higher two-dimensional Landau levels
