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arXiv:1307.1291 · Physical Review B

State counting for excited bands of the fractional quantum Hall effect: Exclusion rules for bound excitons

Ajit Coimbatore Balram, Arkadiusz Wójs, Jainendra K. Jain

Published Nov 27, 2013• 51 citations
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Abstract

Exact diagonalization studies have revealed that the energy spectrum of interacting electrons in the lowest Landau level splits, nonperturbatively, into bands, which is responsible for the fascinating phenomenology of this system. The theory of nearly free composite fermions has been shown to be valid for the lowest band, and thus to capture the low-temperature physics, but it overpredicts the number of states for the excited bands. We explain the state counting of higher bands in terms of composite fermions with an infinitely strong short-range interaction between an excited composite-fermion particle and the hole it leaves behind. This interaction, the form of which we derive from the microscopic composite-fermion theory, eliminates configurations containing certain tightly bound composite-fermion excitons. With this modification, the composite-fermion theory reproduces, for all well defined excited bands seen in exact diagonalization studies, an exact counting for $\ensuremath{\nu}>1/3$, and an almost exact counting for $\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\le}1/3$. The resulting insight clarifies that the corrections to the nearly free composite-fermion theory are not thermodynamically significant at sufficiently low temperatures, thus providing a microscopic explanation for why it has proved successful for the analysis of the various properties of the composite-fermion Fermi sea.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.88.205312

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Exact diagonalization studies have revealed that the energy spectrum of interacting electrons in the lowest Landau level splits, nonperturbatively, into bands, which is responsible for the fascinating phenomenology of this system. The theory of nearly free composite fermions has been shown to be valid for the lowest band, and thus to capture the low-temperature physics, but it overpredicts the number of states for the excited bands. We explain the state counting of higher bands in terms of composite fermions with an infinitely strong short-range interaction between an excited composite-fermion particle and the hole it leaves behind. This interaction, the form of which we derive from the microscopic composite-fermion theory, eliminates configurations containing certain tightly bound composite-fermion excitons. With this modification, the composite-fermion theory reproduces, for all well defined excited bands seen in exact diagonalization studies, an exact counting for \ensuremathν>1/3\ensuremath{\nu}>1/3\ensuremathν>1/3, and an almost exact counting for \ensuremathν\ensuremath≤1/3\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\le}1/3\ensuremathν\ensuremath≤1/3. The resulting insight clarifies that the corrections to the nearly free composite-fermion theory are not thermodynamically significant at sufficiently low temperatures, thus providing a microscopic explanation for why it has proved successful for the analysis of the various properties of the composite-fermion Fermi sea.
The eigenstates of interacting electrons in the fractional quantum Hall phase typically form fairly well-defined bands in the energy space. We study systems of six and eight electrons for filling factor 3/7>\ensuremath{\nu}> 2) / 7 and show that composite fermion theory gives insight into the origin of these bands and provides an accurate and complete microscopic description of the strongly correlated many-body states in the low-energy bands. This implies that, somewhat like in Landau's Fermi liquid theory, there is a one-to-one analogy between the low-energy Hilbert space of strongly interacting electrons in the fractional quantum Hall effect and that of weakly interacting electrons in the integer quantum Hall effect.
Exact diagonalization of a two-dimensional electron gas in a strong magnetic field in the disk geometry shows that there exists a filling-factor range in the second Landau level where the states significantly differ from those in the lowest Landau level. We show that the difference arises because the interaction between composite fermions is not negligible in higher Landau levels, as indicated by a substantial mixing between composite-fermion Landau-like levels, or $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ levels. We find that the exact ground state is well reproduced by composite-fermion theory with $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$-level mixing incorporated at the lowest level of approximation. Using the same variational approach in the spherical geometry we estimate the excitation gap at filling 1∕31∕31∕3 in the second Landau level (which corresponds to 7∕37∕37∕3 of experiment).
Single particle basis functions for composite fermions are obtained from which many-composite fermion states confined to the lowest electronic Landau level can be constructed in the standard manner, i.e. by building Slater determinants. This representation enables a Monte Carlo study of systems containing a large number of composite fermions, yielding new quantitative and qualitative information. The ground state energy and the gaps to charged and neutral excitations are computed for a number of fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) states, earlier off-limits to a quantitative investigation. The ground state energies are estimated to be accurate to ~0.1% and the gaps at the level of a few percent. It is also shown that at Landau level fillings smaller than or equal to 1/9 the FQHE is unstable to a spontaneous creation of excitons of composite fermions. In addition, this approach provides new conceptual insight into the structure of the composite fermion wave functions, resolving in the affirmative the question of whether it is possible to motivate the composite fermion theory entirely within the lowest Landau level, without appealing to higher Landau levels.
Motivated by the issue of particle-hole symmetry for the composite fermion Fermi sea at the half filled Landau level, Dam T. Son has made an intriguing proposal [Phys. Rev. X {\bf 5}, 031027 (2015)] that composite fermions are Dirac particles. We ask what features of the Dirac-composite fermion theory and its various consequences may be reconciled with the well established microscopic theory of the fractional quantum Hall effect and the 1/2 state, which is based on {\em non-relativistic} composite fermions. Starting from the microscopic theory, we derive the assertion of Son that the particle-hole transformation of electrons at filling factor ν=1/2\nu=1/2ν=1/2 corresponds to an effective time reversal transformation (i.e. {k⃗j}\{\vec{k}_j\}{kj​}→\rightarrow→{−k⃗j}\{-\vec{k}_j\}{−kj​}) for composite fermions, and discuss how this connects to the absence of 2kF2k_{\rm F}2kF​ backscattering in the presence of a particle-hole symmetric disorder. By considering bare holes in various composite-fermion Λ\LambdaΛ levels (analogs of electronic Landau levels) we determine the Λ\LambdaΛ level spacing and find it to be very nearly independent of the Λ\LambdaΛ level index, consistent with a parabolic dispersion for the underlying composite fermions. Finally, we address the compatibility of the Chern-Simons theory with the lowest Landau level constraint, and find that the wave functions of the mean-field Chern-Simons theory, as well as a class of topologically similar wave functions, are surprisingly accurate when projected into the lowest Landau level. These considerations lead us to introduce a normal form for the unprojected wave functions of the n/(2pn−1)n/(2pn-1)n/(2pn−1) states that correctly capture the topological properties even without lowest Landau level projection.
The excitations of the 7/3 fractional Hall state, one of the most prominent states in the second Landau level, are not understood. We study the effect of screening by composite fermion excitons and find that it causes a strong renormalization at 7/3, thanks to a relatively small exciton gap and a relatively large residual interaction between composite fermions. The excitations of the 7/3 state are to be viewed as composite fermions dressed by a large exciton cloud. Their wide extent has implications for experiments as well as for analysis of finite system exact diagonalization studies.
The particle-hole (PH) symmetry of electrons is an exact symmetry of the electronic Hamiltonian confined to a specific Landau level, and its interplay with the formation of composite fermions has attracted much attention of late. We investigate an emergent symmetry in the fractional quantum Hall effect, namely, the PH symmetry of composite fermions, which relates states at composite fermion filling factors ${\ensuremath{\nu}}^{*}=n+\overline{\ensuremath{\nu}}$ and ${\ensuremath{\nu}}^{*}=n+1\ensuremath{-}\overline{\ensuremath{\nu}}$, where the integer nnn is the $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$-level index and $0\ensuremath{\le}\overline{\ensuremath{\nu}}\ensuremath{\le}1$. Detailed calculations using the microscopic theory of composite fermions demonstrate the following for low-lying $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$ levels (small nnn): (i) The two-body interaction between composite-fermion particles is very similar, apart from a constant additive term and an overall scale factor, to that between composite-fermion holes in the same $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$ level; and (ii) the three-body interaction for composite fermions is an order of magnitude smaller than the two-body interaction. Taken together, these results imply an approximate PH symmetry for composite fermions in low $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$ levels, which is also supported by exact-diagonalization studies and available experiments. This symmetry, which relates states at electron filling factors $\ensuremath{\nu}=\frac{n+\overline{\ensuremath{\nu}}}{2(n+\overline{\ensuremath{\nu}})\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}1}$ and $\ensuremath{\nu}=\frac{n+1\ensuremath{-}\overline{\ensuremath{\nu}}}{2(n+1\ensuremath{-}\overline{\ensuremath{\nu}})\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}1}$, is not present in the original Hamiltonian and owes its existence entirely to the formation of composite fermions. With increasing $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$-level index, the two-body and three-body pseudopotentials become comparable, but at the same time they both diminish in magnitude, indicating that the interaction between composite fermions becomes weak as we approach $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2$.