Stability and Effective Masses of Composite Fermions in the First and Second Landau Level

We report finite-size studies of composite fermions (CF's) at even-denominator filling fractions. These show that, in the absence of strong Landau level (LL) mixing effects, the CF liquid cannot form for a half-filled second LL. We relate this to the absence of a hierarchy of incompressible states for filling fractions $2+1/3<\mathrm{}\nu <2+2\mathrm{}/3$. We find that a polarized CF liquid should exist for a quarter-filled second LL. We also show that, for CF states, the variation with system size of the ground state energy of interacting electrons follows that for noninteracting particles in zero magnetic field. We use this to estimate the CF effective masses. We suggest an explanation of these results based on the Rezayi-Read trial wave function and present estimates for the flux-binding energy.