VARIATIONAL STUDY OF THE VORTEX STRUCTURE OF COMPOSITE FERMIONS

We consider a one-parameter family of wave functions for composite fer mions. There are explicitly two vortices bound to each electron in the se wave functions, but the internal structure of the vortices, which g overns the short-distance behavior of the two-particle correlation fun ction, is continuously changed by varying the number of zeros at each electron. The kinetic and interaction energies are evaluated using Mon te Carlo techniques. It is found that the wave function with equal num bers of zeros and vortices does not in general have the lowest energy, but is energetically quite competitive.