Exotic electronic phases in the second Landau level

Recent experiments have shown that two-dimensional electron systems with an externally applied magnetic field are an extremely rich ground for many-body physics. In particular, when only two of the Landau levels (LL) are filled an intricate magnetoresistance is found. This result stems from an interesting competition of electronic phases such as fractional quantum Hall liquids, reentrant integer Hall states, and unique quantized states at even denominator LL filling factors. We present a brief review of the transport properties of these electronic phases and discuss in detail the effects of an added in-plane magnetic field. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.