Quantum Hall states of bosons in rotating anharmonic traps

We study a model of bosons in the lowest Landau level in a rotating trap where the confinement potential is a sum of a quadratic and a quartic term. The quartic term improves the stability of the system against centrifugal deconfinement and allows consideration of rotation frequencies beyond the frequency of the quadratic part. The interactions between particles are modeled by a Dirac δ potential. We derive rigorously conditions for ground states of the system to be strongly correlated in the sense that they are confined to the kernel of the interaction operator, and thus contain the correlations of the Bose-Laughlin state. Rigorous angular momentum estimates and trial state arguments indicate a transition from a pure Laughlin state to a state containing in addition a giant vortex at the center of the trap (Laughlin quasihole). There are also indications of a second transition where the density changes from a flat profile in a disk or an annulus to a radial Gaussian confined to a thin annulus