  In condensed matter physics, the study of electronic states with SU(N)
symmetry has attracted considerable and growing attention in recent years, as
systems with such a symmetry can often have a spontaneous symmetry-breaking
effect giving rise to a novel ground state. For example, pseudospin quantum
Hall ferromagnet of broken SU(2) symmetry has been realized by bringing two
Landau levels close to degeneracy in a bilayer quantum Hall system. In the past
several years, the exploration of collective states in other multi-component
quantum Hall systems has emerged. Here we show the conventional pseudospin
quantum Hall ferromagnetic states with broken SU(2) symmetry collapsed rapidly
into an unexpected state with broken SU(4) symmetry, by in-plane magnetic field
in a two-subband GaAs/AlGaAs two-dimensional electron system at filling factor
around $\nu=4$. Within a narrow tilting range angle of 0.5 degrees, the
activation energy increases as much as 12 K. While the origin of this puzzling
observation remains to be exploited, we discuss the possibility of a
long-sought pairing state of electrons with a four-fold degeneracy.
