Singular Pair Breaking in the Composite Fermi Liquid Description of the Half-Filled Landau Level

Fluctuations of the Chern-Simons gauge field in the composite Fermi liquid description of the half-filled Landau level are pair breaking in all angular momentum channels. For short-range electron-electron interactions these fluctuations are sufficiently strong to drive any T=0 pairing transition first order. For Coulomb interactions these fluctuations are weaker and a continuous transition is possible.