Semiclassics in the lowest Landau band

Abstract

This paper deals with the comparison between the strong Thomas-Fermi theory and the quantum mechanical ground state energy of a large atom confined to lowest Landau band wave functions. Using the tools of microlocal semiclassical spectral asymptotics we derive precise error estimates. The approach presented in this paper suggests the definition of a modified strong Thomas-Fermi functional, where the main modification consists in replacing the integration over the variables perpendicular to the magnetic field by an expansion in angular momentum eigenfunctions. The resulting DSTF theory is studied in detail in the second part of the paper.