Is the Composite Fermion a Dirac Particle?

Abstract

We propose a particle-hole symmetric theory of the Fermi-liquid ground state of a half-filled Landau level. This theory should be applicable for a Dirac fermion in the magnetic field at charge neutrality, as well as for the ν=1/2 quantum Hall ground state of nonrelativistic fermions in the limit of negligible inter-Landau-level mixing. We argue that when particle-hole symmetry is exact, the composite fermion is a massless Dirac fermion, characterized by a Berry phase of π around the Fermi circle. We write down a tentative effective field theory of such a fermion and discuss the discrete symmetries, in particular, CP. The Dirac composite fermions interact through a gauge, but non-Chern-Simons, interaction. The particle-hole conjugate pair of Jain-sequence states at filling factors n/(2n+1) and (n+1)/(2n+1), which in the conventional composite fermion picture corresponds to integer quantum Hall states with different filling factors, n and n+1, is now mapped to the same half-integer filling factor n+1/2 of the Dirac composite fermion. The Pfaffian and anti-Pfaffian states are interpreted as d-wave Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer paired states of the Dirac fermion with orbital angular momentum of opposite signs, while s-wave pairing would give rise to a particle-hole symmetric non-Abelian gapped phase. When particle-hole symmetry is not exact, the Dirac fermion has a CP-breaking mass. The conventional fermionic Chern-Simons theory is shown to emerge in the nonrelativistic limit of the massive theory.