Half-filled lowest Landau level on a thin torus.

We solve a model that describes an interacting electron gas in the half-filled lowest Landau level on a thin torus, with radius of the order of the magnetic length. The low-energy sector consists of noninteracting, one-dimensional, neutral fermions. The ground state, which is homogeneous, is the Fermi sea obtained by filling the negative energy states, and the excited states are gapless neutral excitations out of this one-dimensional sea. Although the limit considered is extreme, the solution has a striking resemblance to the composite fermion description of the bulk nu=1/2 state-the ground state is homogeneous and the excitations are neutral and gapless. This suggests a one-dimensional Luttinger liquid description, with possible observable effects in transport experiments, of the bulk state where it develops continuously from the state on a thin torus as the radius increases.