Monte Carlo Comparison of Quasielectron Wave Functions

Variational Monte Carlo calculations of the quasielectron and quasihole excitation energies in the fractional quantum Hall effect have been carried out at filling fractions $\nu=1/3$, 1/5, and 1/7. For the quasielectron both the trial wave function originally proposed by Laughlin and the composite fermion wave function proposed by Jain have been used. We find that for long-range Coulomb interactions the results obtained using these two wave functions are essentially the same, though the energy gap obtained using the composite fermion quasielectron is slightly smaller, and closer to extrapolated exact-diagonalization results.