Models for Gapped Boundaries and Domain Walls

We define a class of lattice models for two-dimensional topological phases with boundary such that both the bulk and the boundary excitations are gapped. The bulk part is constructed using a unitary tensor category C{\mathcal C} as in the Levin-Wen model, whereas the boundary is associated with a module category over C{\mathcal C} . We also consider domain walls (or defect lines) between different bulk phases. A domain wall is transparent to bulk excitations if the corresponding unitary tensor categories are Morita equivalent. Defects of higher codimension will also be studied. In summary, we give a dictionary between physical ingredients of lattice models and tensor-categorical notions.     

An Anyon Model in a Toric Honeycomb Lattice

We study an anyon model in a toric honeycomb lattice. The ground states and the low-lying excitations coincide with those of Kitaev toric code model and then the excitations obey mutual semionic statistics. This model is helpful to understand the toric code of anyons in a more symmetric way. On the other hand, there is a direct relation between this toric honeycomb model and a boundary coupled Ising chain array in a square lattice via Jordan-Wignertransformation. We discuss the equivalence between these two modelsin the low-lying sector and realize these anyon excitations in a conventional fermion system. The analysis for the ground state degeneracy in the last section can also be thought of as a complementarity of our previous work [Phys. A: Math. Theor. 43 (2010) 105306].     

Exact microscopic wave function for a topological quantum membrane

The higher dimensional quantum Hall liquid constructed recently supports stable topological membrane excitations. Here we introduce a microscopic interacting Hamiltonian and present its exact ground state wave function. We show that this microscopic ground state wave function describes a topological quantum membrane. We also construct variational wave functions for excited states using the noncommutative algebra on the four sphere. Our approach introduces a nonperturbative method to quantize topological membranes.     

Uniqueness of the Ground State in Weak Perturbations of Non-Interacting Gapped Quantum Lattice Systems

We consider a general weak perturbation of a non-interacting quantum lattice system with a non-degenerate gapped ground state. We prove that in a finite volume the dependence of the ground state on the boundary condition exponentially decays with the distance to the boundary, which implies in particular that the infinite-volume ground state is unique. Also, equivalent forms of boundary conditions for ground states of general finite quantum systems are discussed.On leave from Institute for Information Transmission Problems, Moscow, Russia.     

Exact ground states of a frustrated 2D magnet: deconfined fractional excitations at a first-order quantum phase transition

We introduce a frustrated spin 1/2 Hamiltonian which is an extension of the two dimensional J1-J2 Heisenberg model. The ground states of this model are exactly obtained at a first-order quantum phase transition between two valence bond crystals. At this point, the low energy excitations are deconfined spinons and spin-charge separation occurs under doping in the limit of low concentration of holes. In addition, this point is characterized by the proliferation of topological defects.     

Emergent fermions and anyons in the kitaev model

We study the gapped phase of the Kitaev model on the honeycomb lattice using perturbative continuous unitary transformations. The effective low-energy Hamiltonian is found to be an extended toric code with interacting anyons. High-energy excitations are emerging free fermions which are composed of hard-core bosons with an attached string of spin operators. The excitation spectrum is mapped onto that of a single particle hopping on a square lattice in a magnetic field. We also illustrate how to compute correlation functions in this framework. The present approach yields analytical perturbative results in the thermodynamical limit without using the Majorana or the Jordan-Wigner fermionization initially proposed to solve this problem.     

Topological order and semions in a strongly correlated quantum spin Hall insulator

We provide a self-consistent mean-field framework to study the effect of strong interactions in a quantum spin Hall insulator on the honeycomb lattice. We identify an exotic phase for large spin-orbit coupling and intermediate Hubbard interaction. This phase is gapped and does not break any symmetry. Instead, we find a fourfold topological degeneracy of the ground state on the torus and fractionalized excitations with semionic mutual braiding statistics. Moreover, we argue that it has gapless edge modes protected by time-reversal symmetry but a trivial Z(2) topological invariant. Finally, we discuss the experimental signatures of this exotic phase. Our work highlights the important theme that interesting phases arise in the regime of strong spin-orbit coupling and interactions.     

Topological order from quantum loops and nets

I define models of quantum loops and nets that have ground states with topological order. These make possible excited states comprised of deconfined anyons with non-abelian braiding. With the appropriate inner product, these quantum loop models are equivalent to net models whose topological weight involves the chromatic polynomial. A simple Hamiltonian preserving the topological order is found by exploiting quantum self-duality. For the square lattice, this Hamiltonian has only four-spin interactions.     

Weyl and Nodal Ring Magnons in Three-Dimensional Honeycomb Lattices

We study the topological properties of magnon excitations in a wide class of three-dimensional(3 D) honeycomb lattices with ferromagnetic ground states. It is found that they host nodal ring magnon excitations. These rings locate on the same plane in the momentum space. The nodal ring degeneracy can be lifted by the DzyaloshinskiiMoriya interactions to form two Weyl points with opposite charges. We explicitly discuss these physics in the simplest 3 D honeycomb lattice and the hyerhoneycomb lattice, and show drumhead and arc surface states in the nodal ring and Weyl phases, respectively, due to the bulk-boundary correspondence.     

Spin hamiltonian for which the chiral spin liquid is the exact ground state

We construct a Hamiltonian that singles out the chiral spin liquid on a square lattice with periodic boundary conditions as the exact and, apart from the twofold topological degeneracy, unique ground state.     

Quantum dimer model on the kagome lattice: solvable dimer-liquid and ising gauge theory

We introduce quantum dimer models on lattices made of corner-sharing triangles. These lattices include the kagome lattice and can be defined in arbitrary geometry. They realize fully disordered and gapped dimer-liquid phase with topological degeneracy and deconfined fractional excitations, as well as solid phases. Using geometrical properties of the lattice, several results are obtained exactly, including the full spectrum of a dimer liquid. These models offer a very natural-and maybe the simplest possible-framework to illustrate general concepts such as fractionalization, topological order, and relation to Z2 gauge theories.     

Quantum spin liquid near Mott transition with fermionized π-vortices

In this paper, we study the non-magnetic insulator state near Mott transition of 2D π-flux Hubbard model on square lattice and find that such non-magnetic insulator state is quantum spin liquid state with nodal fermionic excitations – nodal spin liquid (NSL). When there exists small easy-plane anisotropic energy, the ground state becomes Z ₂ topological spin liquid (TSL) with full gapped excitations. The U(1) × U(1) mutual-Chern-Simons (MCS) theory is obtained to describe the low energy physics of NSL and TSL.     

A symmetry principle for topological quantum order

We present a unifying framework to study physical systems which exhibit topological quantum order (TQO). The major guiding principle behind our approach is that of symmetries and entanglement. These symmetries may be actual symmetries of the Hamiltonian characterizing the system, or emergent symmetries. To this end, we introduce the concept of low-dimensional Gauge-like symmetries (GLSs), and the physical conservation laws (including topological terms, fractionalization, and the absence of quasi-particle excitations) which emerge from them. We prove then sufficient conditions for TQO at both zero and finite temperatures. The physical engine for TQO are topological defects associated with the restoration of GLSs. These defects propagate freely through the system and enforce TQO. Our results are strongest for gapped systems with continuous GLSs. At zero temperature, selection rules associated with the GLSs enable us to systematically construct general states with TQO; these selection rules do not rely on the existence of a finite gap between the ground states to all other excited states. Indices associated with these symmetries correspond to different topological sectors. All currently known examples of TQO display GLSs. Other systems exhibiting such symmetries include Hamiltonians depicting orbital-dependent spin-exchange and Jahn-Teller effects in transition metal orbital compounds, short-range frustrated Klein spin models, and p+ip superconducting arrays. The symmetry based framework discussed herein allows us to go beyond standard topological field theories and systematically engineer new physical models with finite temperature TQO (both Abelian and non-Abelian). Furthermore, we analyze the insufficiency of entanglement entropy (we introduce SU(N) Klein models on small world networks to make the argument even sharper), spectral structures, maximal string correlators, and fractionalization in establishing TQO. We show that Kitaev’s Toric code model and Wen’s plaquette model are equivalent and reduce, by a duality mapping, to an Ising chain, demonstrating that despite the spectral gap in these systems the toric operator expectation values may vanish once thermal fluctuations are present. This illustrates the fact that the quantum states themselves in a particular (operator language) representation encode TQO and that the duality mappings, being non-local in the original representation, disentangle the order. We present a general algorithm for the construction of long-range string and brane orders in general systems with entangled ground states; this algorithm relies on general ground states selection rules and becomes of the broadest applicability in gapped systems in arbitrary dimensions. We exactly recast some known non-local string correlators in terms of local correlation functions. We discuss relations to problems in graph theory.     

Product Vacua with Boundary States and the Classification of Gapped Phases

We address the question of the classification of gapped ground states in one dimension that cannot be distinguished by a local order parameter. We introduce a family of quantum spin systems on the one-dimensional chain that have a unique gapped ground state in the thermodynamic limit that is a simple product state, but which on the left and right half-infinite chains have additional zero energy edge states. The models, which we call Product Vacua with Boundary States, form phases that depend only on two integers corresponding to the number of edge states at each boundary. They can serve as representatives of equivalence classes of such gapped ground states phases and we show how the AKLT model and its SO(2J + 1)-invariant generalizations fit into this classification.     

PEPS as ground states: Degeneracy and topology

We introduce a framework for characterizing Matrix Product States (MPS) and Projected Entangled Pair States (PEPS) in terms of symmetries. This allows us to understand how PEPS appear as ground states of local Hamiltonians with finitely degenerate ground states and to characterize the ground state subspace. Subsequently, we apply our framework to show how the topological properties of these ground states can be explained solely from the symmetry: We prove that ground states are locally indistinguishable and can be transformed into each other by acting on a restricted region, we explain the origin of the topological entropy, and we discuss how to renormalize these states based on their symmetries. Finally, we show how the anyonic character of excitations can be understood as a consequence of the underlying symmetries.     

Amplitude mode in the quantum phase model

We derive the collective low-energy excitations of the quantum phase model of interacting lattice bosons within the superfluid state using a dynamical variational approach. We recover the well-known sound (or Goldstone) mode and derive a gapped (Higgs-type) mode that was overlooked in previous studies of the quantum phase model. This mode is relevant to ultracold atoms in a strong optical lattice potential. We predict the signature of the gapped mode in lattice modulation experiments and show how it evolves with increasing interaction strength.