Maximum-density droplet to lower-density droplet transition in quantum dots

We show that the Landau level mixing in two-dimensional quantum dot wave functions can be taken into account very effectively by multiplying the exact lowest Landau level wave functions by a Jastrow factor which is optimized by variance minimization. The comparison between exact diagonalization and fixed phase diffusion Monte Carlo results suggests that the phase of the many-body wave functions are not affected much by Landau level mixing. We apply these wave functions to study the transition from the maximum density droplet state {[}incipient integer quantum Hall state with angular momentum L=N(N-1)/2] to lower density droplet states {[}L > N(N-1)/2].