Resistivity anisotropy of quantum Hall stripe phases

Abstract: Quantum Hall stripe phases near half-integer filling factors $\nu \ge 9/2$ were predicted by Hartree-Fock (HF) theory and confirmed by discoveries of giant resistance anisotropies in high-mobility two-dimensional electron gases. A theory of such anisotropy was proposed by MacDonald and Fisher, although they used parameters whose dependencies on the filling factor, electron density, and mobility remained unspecified. Here, we fill this void by calculating the hard-to-easy resistivity ratio as a function of these three variables. Quantitative comparison with experiment yields very good agreement which we view as evidence for the "plain vanilla" smectic stripe HF phases.