Emergent Gauge Field in Composite-Fermion Metals: A Large-Scale Microscopic Study

Field theories of the composite-fermion (CF) metal model it as a Fermi sea of composite fermions coupled to an emergent gauge field. Within a random phase approximation, these theories predict that the Landau damping of the gauge field resulting from its coupling to the low-energy, long-wavelength CF particle-hole excitations modifies the electrons’ density-density correlation function related to the static structure factor S(q) at wave vector q. This produces a nonanalytic correction ∝q3lnq to S(q) (with the magnetic length ℓB=1). Thanks to the recently developed quaternion formulation for Jain-Kamilla projection of CF wave functions, the evaluation of S(q) from the accurate microscopic theory of composite fermions has now become possible for systems containing as many as N=900 CFs, which enables a reliable determination of the small-q behavior of S(q). We study CF metals corresponding to electrons at Landau level filling factors ν=1/2 and 1/4, and for completeness, also of bosons at ν=1 and 1/3. In the q→0 limit, our microscopic calculation reveals a q3 term in S(q) of the CF metals rather than q3lnq. This behavior is well predicted by a model of a noninteracting Fermi sea of dipolar CFs, which also obtains its coefficient accurately.