Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

5-2013

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Physics

Major Professor

Joseph H. Macek

Committee Members

John J. Quinn, Adriana Moreo, Janice L. Musfeldt, Predrag S. Krstić

Abstract

The discovery of the quantum Hall effect in 1980 opened to physics one of the simplest systems for studying many-body correlations. Numerical techniques and trial wavefunctions have proven useful for describing the novel collective behavior of the electrons, but have not fully explained all features of the fractional quantum Hall effect. For example, it is predicted that Landau level mixing should have a moderate effect on the system for all but the very strongest magnetic fields, but this effect has not been extensively studied. Among the tools most useful to modeling and describing the quantum Hall system is the Haldane pseudopotential, which is the energy of electron pairs as a function of their coupled total angular momentum. Because the pseudopotential uniquely determines the correlative behaviors in the quantum Hall system, the study of the pseudopotential is particularly important. In this dissertation I will first derive novel analytic expressions for the pair interactions and the pseudopotential using the techniques of angular momentum algebra. Then, I will use these results to numerically determine the effect of Landau level mixing on the pair pseudopotentials.

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