We compute energy gaps for spin-polarized fractional quantum Hall states in
the lowest Landau level at filling fractions nu=1/3, 2/5,3/7 and 4/9 using
exact diagonalization of systems with up to 16 particles and extrapolation to
the infinite system-size limit. The gaps calculated for a pure Coulomb
interaction and ignoring finite width effects, disorder and LL mixing agree
with predictions of composite fermion theory provided the logarithmic
corrections to the effective mass are included. This is in contrast with
previous estimates, which, as we show, overestimated the gaps at nu=2/5 and 3/7
by around 15%. We also study the reduction of the gaps as a result of the
non-zero width of the 2D layer. We show that these effects are accurately
accounted for using either Gaussian or z*Gaussian' (zG) trial wavefunctions,
which we show are significantly better variational wavefunctions than the
Fang-Howard wavefunction. For quantum well parameters typical of
heterostructure samples, we find gap reductions of around 20%. The experimental
gaps, after accounting heuristically for disorder,are still around 40% smaller
than the computed gaps. However, for the case of tetracene layers
inmetal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) devices we find that the measured
activation gaps are close to those we compute. We discuss possible reasons why
the difference between computed and measured activation gaps is larger in GaAs
heterostructures than in MIS devices. Finally, we present new calculations
using systems with up to 18 electrons of the gap at nu=5/2 including width
corrections.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figure