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International Journal of Modern Physics B

ANALYTIC WAVE FUNCTIONS FOR THE HALF-FILLED LOWEST LANDAU LEVEL

Orion Ciftja

Published Jul 20, 2010• 13 citations

Abstract

We consider a two-dimensional strongly correlated electronic system in a strong perpendicular magnetic field at half-filling of the lowest Landau level (LLL). We seek to build a wave function that, by construction, lies entirely in the Hilbert space of the LLL. Quite generally, a wave function of this nature can be built as a linear combination of all possible Slater determinants formed by using the complete set of single-electron states that belong to the LLL. However, due to the vast number of Slater determinant states required to form such basis functions, the expansion is impractical for any but the smallest systems. Thus, in practice, the expansion must be truncated to a small number of Slater determinants. Among many possible LLL Slater determinant states, we note a particular special class of such wave functions in which electrons occupy either only even, or only odd angular momentum states. We focus on such a class of wave functions and obtain analytic expressions for various quantities of interest. Results seem to suggest that these special wave functions, while interesting and physically appealing, are unlikely to be a very good approximation for the exact ground state at half-filling factor. The overall quality of the description can be improved by including other additional LLL Slater determinant states. It is during this process that we identify another special family of suitable LLL Slater determinant states to be used in an enlarged expansion.

DOI: 10.1142/s0217979210055469

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We consider a two-dimensional strongly correlated electronic system in a strong perpendicular magnetic field at half-filling of the lowest Landau level (LLL). We seek to build a wave function that, by construction, lies entirely in the Hilbert space of the LLL. Quite generally, a wave function of this nature can be built as a linear combination of all possible Slater determinants formed by using the complete set of single-electron states that belong to the LLL. However, due to the vast number of Slater determinant states required to form such basis functions, the expansion is impractical for any but the smallest systems. Thus, in practice, the expansion must be truncated to a small number of Slater determinants. Among many possible LLL Slater determinant states, we note a particular special class of such wave functions in which electrons occupy either only even, or only odd angular momentum states. We focus on such a class of wave functions and obtain analytic expressions for various quantities of interest. Results seem to suggest that these special wave functions, while interesting and physically appealing, are unlikely to be a very good approximation for the exact ground state at half-filling factor. The overall quality of the description can be improved by including other additional LLL Slater determinant states. It is during this process that we identify another special family of suitable LLL Slater determinant states to be used in an enlarged expansion.

The analyticity of the lowest Landau level wave functions and the relation between the filling factor and the total angular momentum severely limits the possible forms of trial wave functions of a disk of electrons subject to a strong perpendicular magnetic field. For the number N of electrons up to 12 we have tested these disk trial wave functions for the half-filled Landau level using Monte Carlo and exact diagonalization methods. The agreement between the results for the occupation numbers and ground state energies obtained from these two methods is excellent. We have also compared the profile of the occupation number near the edge with that obtained from a field-theoretical method. The results give qualitatively identical edge profiles. Experimental consequences are briefly discussed.

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.

We study two interacting electrons in a two-dimensional system under a strong magnetic field and show that their numerically exact solutions organize into a set of {\em sub-Landau levels} characterized by relative angular momentum quantum number

m

. These sub-levels define correlation-resolved subspaces of the Landau-level Hilbert space, while retaining the full degeneracy associated with center-of-mass motion. Within this structure, the accessible states in each correlation channel are effectively reduced, leading to a natural organization of guiding-center states consistent with a fractional occupancy. We further analyze the role of electron correlation, Zeeman splitting, and disorder in stabilizing spin-polarized electron-pair states. Building on the two-electron states, we construct a class of many-electron trial wavefunctions based on correlated electron pairs with fixed

m

, which encode short-range correlations through the vanishing of the pair wavefunction at small separation. Our results establish a direct connection between exact two-body physics and the organization of correlated many-electron states in the lowest Landau level, providing a microscopic perspective on how relative angular momentum structures can underpin the emergence of correlated phases in quantum Hall systems.

Exact two-dimensional analytic wave functions for an arbitrary number N of contact-interacting lowest-Landau-level (LLL) spinful fermions are derived with the use of combined numerical and symbolic computational approaches via analysis of exact Hamiltonian numerical diagonalization data.Closed-form analytic expressions are presented for two families of zero-interaction-energy states at given total angular momentum and total spin 0 S N/2 in the neighborhood of the ν = 1 filling, covering the range from the maximum density droplet to the first quasihole.Our theoretical predictions for higher-order spatial and momentum correlations reveal intrinsic polygonal, multi-ring crystalline-type structures, which can be tested with ultracold-atom experiments in rapidly rotating traps, simulating quantum Hall physics (including quantum LLL skyrmions).

A system of electrons in a half-filled Landau level is investigated in spherical geometry. For systems of size from N=1 to 14 electrons with flux ${\mathit{N}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\varphi}}}$=2(N-1) the angular momentum of the ground state is as predicted by Hund's second rule for composite fermions of one electron and two vortices at zero magnetic field. Low lying excitations also fit this interpretation and trial wave functions give excellent overlaps. The two-particle correlation function shows a significant correlation hole at short distances and suggests an asymptotically oscillating form at long distances, as in a Fermi liquid.

The microscopic approach for studying the half-filled state of the fractional quantum Hall effect is based on the idea of proposing a trial Fermi wave function of the Jastrow-Slater form, which is then fully projected onto the lowest Landau level. A simplified starting point is to drop the projection operator and to consider an unprojected wave function. A recent study claims that such a wave function approximated in a Jastrow form may still constitute a good starting point on the study of the half-filled state. In this paper we formalize the effective hypernetted-chain approximation and apply it to the unprojected Fermi wave function, which describes the even-denominator-filling states. We test the above approximation by using the Fermi hypernetted-chain theory, which constitutes the natural choice for the present case. Our results suggest that the approximation of the Slater determinant of plane waves as a Jastrow wave function may not be a very accurate approximation. We conclude that the lowest Landau-level projection operator cannot be neglected if one wants a better quantitative understanding of the phenomena.