Density Matrix Renormalization Group Study of Incompressible Fractional Quantum Hall States

We develop the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) technique for numerically studying incompressible fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states on the sphere. We calculate accurate estimates for ground-state energies and excitation gaps at FQH filling fractions nu=1/3 and nu=5/2 for systems that are considerably larger than the largest ever studied by exact diagonalization. We establish, by carefully comparing with existing numerical results on smaller systems, that DMRG is a highly effective numerical tool for studying incompressible FQH states.