Projections and correlations in the fractional quantum Hall effect

Abstract

More than 30 years after its surprising experimental discovery, the quantum Hall effect remains one of the most active and interesting fields of research in condensed matter physics. The theory pertaining to the phenomenon comprises a hugely varied and fascinating body of work, incorporating frameworks such as variational trial wavefunctions, topological phases, conformal field theory and more. There are reasons to expect that some phases of the system harbour nonabelian excitations: particles whose interchange affects the state of the whole system in a way depending on the order of exchange. This has been proposed as a suitable basis for noise resistant quantum computing. The excitations are an emergent property of the totality of the system, whose main active constituent is the well understood electron. The electrons act together in such a way as to manifest exotic quasiparticles; these kinds of strong correlations are a general feature of the system. One can argue that the quantum Hall effect shows the limits of reductionism. In this work we focus on trial wavefunctions as descriptions of the phenomenon. Although highly succesful in the past their evaluation is often impeded by a feature known as lowest Landau level projection. We approach the projection from several angles and in this context introduce an effective and general technique termed energy projection. Using this we examine several trial wavefunctions that have been difficult to deal with in the past. The quantity known as the pair correlation function is an important tool for the analysis of wavefunctions. Its study, however, has often been mainly qualitative in the literature. We construct an expansion useful for exact characterisation and comparison of pair correlations and show that it has desirable properties as compared to a similar preexisting expansion. This is then used to scale pair correlation functions to macroscopic sizes