Litcius/Paper detail

Large-scale simulations of particle-hole-symmetric Pfaffian trial wave functions

Mykhailo Yutushui, David F. Mross

2020Physical review. B./Physical review. B27 citationsDOIOpen Access PDF

Abstract

We introduce a family of paired-composite-fermion trial wave functions for any odd Cooper-pair angular momentum. These wave functions are parameter-free and can be efficiently projected into the lowest Landau level. We use large-scale Monte Carlo simulations to study three cases: Firstly, the Moore-Read phase, which serves us as a benchmark. Secondly, we explore the pairing associated with the anti-Pfaffian and the particle-hole-symmetric Pfaffian. Specifically, we assess whether their trial states feature exponentially decaying correlations and thus represent gapped phases of matter. For Moore-Read and anti-Pfaffian we find decay lengths of ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{\text{Moore-Read}}=1.30(5)$ and ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{\text{anti-Pfaffian}}=1.38(14)$, in units of the magnetic length. By contrast, for the case of PH-Pfaffian, we find no evidence of a finite length scale for up to 56 particles.

Topics & Concepts

PfaffianScale (ratio)PhysicsParticle (ecology)Statistical physicsMathematicsQuantum mechanicsGeologyCombinatoricsOceanographyNonlinear Photonic SystemsQuantum and electron transport phenomenaRandom lasers and scattering media