Spectral Function Analysis of Fermi Liquids and of Composite Fermions in a Finite Magnetic Field: Renormalised Gaps

Abstract

We consider the self-energy and quasiparticle spectrum, for both electrons interacting with phonons, and composite fermions interacting with gauge fluctuations. In both cases we incorporate the singular structure arising from Landau level quantization in a finite field. This is then used to determine the renormalised gap between the Fermi energy and the first excited states. The electron-phonon problem is treated for both Debye and Einstein phonons. In the case of composite fermions, it is found that the singular Landau level structure strongly affects the renormalised gap in the intermediate coupling regime, which is relevant to experiments on the fractional quantum Hall effect. We compare our findings with measurements of the gap in fractional Hall states with filling fraction nu near nu=1/2.