Energy minimization of paired composite fermion wave functions in the spherical geometry

Journal article

We perform the energy minimization of the paired composite fermion (CF) wave functions, proposed by Möller and Simon (MS) [Phys. Rev. B 77, 075319 (2008)] and extended by Yutushui and Mross (YM) [Phys. Rev. B 102, 195153 (2020)], where the energy is minimized by varying the CF pairing function, in the case of an approximate model of the Coulomb interaction in the second Landau level for pairing channels ℓ = −1, 3, 1, which are expected to be in the Pfaffian, anti-Pfaffian, and particle-hole symmetric (PH) Pfaffian phases, respectively. It is found that the energy of the ℓ = −1 MS wave function can be reduced substantially below that of the Moore-Read wave function at small system sizes; however, in the ℓ = 3 case the energy cannot be reduced much below that of the YM trial wave function. Nonetheless, both our optimized and unoptimized wave functions with ℓ = −1, 3 extrapolate to roughly the same energy per particle in the thermodynamic limit. For the ℓ = 1 case, the optimization makes no qualitative difference and these PH-Pfaffian wave functions are still energetically unfavorable. The effective CF pairing is analyzed in the resulting wave functions, where the effective pairing for the ℓ = −1, 3 channels is found to be well approximated by a weak-pairing BCS ansatz and the ℓ = 1 wave functions show no sign of emergent CF pairing.

Authors: Henderson, G; Moller, G; Simon, SH

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Journal: Physical Review B
• Volume: 108
• Issue: 24
• Article number: 245128
• Publication date: 2023-12-11
• Acceptance date: 2023-11-21
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.108.245128
• EISSN: 1550-235X
• ISSN: 1098-0121
• Language: English