Anomalous quantum Hall effect and two-dimensional classical plasmas: Analytic approximations for correlation functions and ground-state energies

Abstract

A simple analytic scheme is presented for the estimation of the two-point correlation function and the ground-state energy of a class of variational wave functions of interest in the study of the anomalous quantum Hall effect. The technique is illustrated by application to the wave function recently proposed by Laughlin and to a generalization of this wave function discussed by Halperin. The technique also yields information about the classical two-dimensional plasma problems associated with these wave functions.