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arXiv:1106.3267 · Physical Review B

Galois conjugates of topological phases

Michael H. Freedman, Jan Gukelberger, M. B. Hastings, Simon Trebst, Matthias Troyer, Zhenghan Wang

Published Jan 9, 2012• 33 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Galois conjugation relates unitary conformal field theories and topological quantum field theories (TQFTs) to their nonunitary counterparts. Here we investigate Galois conjugates of quantum double models, such as the Levin-Wen model. While these Galois-conjugated Hamiltonians are typically non-Hermitian, we find that their ground-state wave functions still obey a generalized version of the usual code property (local operators do not act on the ground-state manifold) and hence enjoy a generalized topological protection. The key question addressed in this paper is whether such nonunitary topological phases can also appear as the ground states of Hermitian Hamiltonians. Specific attempts at constructing Hermitian Hamiltonians with these ground states lead to a loss of the code property and topological protection of the degenerate ground states. Beyond this, we rigorously prove that no local change of basis can transform the ground states of the Galois-conjugated doubled Fibonacci theory into the ground states of a topological model whose Hermitian Hamiltonian satisfies Lieb-Robinson bounds. These include all gapped local or quasilocal Hamiltonians. A similar statement holds for many other nonunitary TQFTs. One consequence is that these nonunitary TQFTs do not describe physical realizations of topological phases. In particular, this implies that the ``Gaffnian'' wave function can not be the ground state of a gapped fractional quantum Hall state.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.85.045414

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Galois conjugation relates unitary conformal field theories and topological quantum field theories (TQFTs) to their nonunitary counterparts. Here we investigate Galois conjugates of quantum double models, such as the Levin-Wen model. While these Galois-conjugated Hamiltonians are typically non-Hermitian, we find that their ground-state wave functions still obey a generalized version of the usual code property (local operators do not act on the ground-state manifold) and hence enjoy a generalized topological protection. The key question addressed in this paper is whether such nonunitary topological phases can also appear as the ground states of Hermitian Hamiltonians. Specific attempts at constructing Hermitian Hamiltonians with these ground states lead to a loss of the code property and topological protection of the degenerate ground states. Beyond this, we rigorously prove that no local change of basis can transform the ground states of the Galois-conjugated doubled Fibonacci theory into the ground states of a topological model whose Hermitian Hamiltonian satisfies Lieb-Robinson bounds. These include all gapped local or quasilocal Hamiltonians. A similar statement holds for many other nonunitary TQFTs. One consequence is that these nonunitary TQFTs do not describe physical realizations of topological phases. In particular, this implies that the ``Gaffnian'' wave function can not be the ground state of a gapped fractional quantum Hall state.
We provide a generalization of the matrix product operator formalism for string-net projected entangled pair states (PEPS) to include nonunitary solutions of the pentagon equation. These states provide the explicit lattice realization of the Galois conjugated counterparts of (2+1)-dimensional topological quantum field theories, based on tensor fusion categories. Although the parent Hamiltonians of these renormalization group fixed point states are gapless, these states can still be the topological ground states of a gapped non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. We show by example that the topological sectors of the Yang-Lee theory (the nonunitary counterpart of the Fibonacci fusion category) can be constructed, even in the absence of closure under Hermitian conjugation of the basis elements of the Ocneanu tube algebra. The topological sector construction is demonstrated by applying the concept of strange correlators to the Yang-Lee model, giving rise to a nonunitary version of the classical hard hexagon model in the Yang-Lee universality class and obtaining all generalized twisted boundary conditions on a finite cylinder of the Yang-Lee edge singularity. Finally, we construct the PEPS transfer matrix and show that taking the Hermitian conjugate changes the topological phase for these nonunitary string-net models.
After almost half a century of Laughlin's celebrated study of the wavefunctions of integer and fractional quantum Hall effects, there have still existed difficulties to prove whether the given wavefunction can describe gapped phase or not in general. In this work, we show the FQH states constructed from nonunitary conformal field theories (CFTs), such as Gaffiinian and Haldane-Rezayi states have a difficulty gapping out under preserving bulk-edge correspondence in the cylinder geometry. Contrary to the common understandings of the condensed matter communities, the gaplessness for these systems seems not to come from the negative conformal dimensions of nonunitary CFTs in this setting at least directly. We propose the difficulty is coming from the mismatch of monodromy charge and simple charge of underlying CFTs, known as Galois shuffle. In the Haldane-Rezayi state, this corresponds to the conjugate operation of the Neveu-Schwartz and Ramond sectors for unitary Weyl fermion and symplectic fermion. In the Gaffinian state, besides Galois shuffle structure, the anomalous conformal dimension of the Z2Z_{2}Z2​ simple current results in the cylinder partition functions outside of the existing local quantum field theory. This indicates the existing gapless fractional quantum Hall states have similar nonlocal structures, similar to deconfined quantum criticality. Our work opens up a new paradigm which gives a criterion to predict whether the candidate of topological ordered states are gapped or not, and local or nonlocal, by revisiting the problem of anomaly and the duality of symplectic and Dirac fermion.
We revisit a class of non-Hermitian topological models that are Galois conjugates of their Hermitian counter parts. Particularly, these are Galois conjugates of unitary string-net models. We demonstrate that these models necessarily have real spectra, and that topological numbers are recovered as matrix elements of operators evaluated in appropriate biorthogonal basis, that we conveniently reformulate as a concomitant Hilbert space here. We also compute in the biorthogonal basis the topological entanglement entropy, demonstrating that its real part is related to the quantum dimension of the topological order. While we focus mostly on the Yang-Lee model, the results in the paper apply generally to Galois conjugates.
The fractional quantum Hall effect is the paradigmatic example of topologically ordered phases. One of its most fascinating aspects is the large variety of different topological orders that may be realized, in particular non-Abelian ones. Here we analyze a class of non-Abelian fractional quantum Hall model states which are generalizations of the Abelian Haldane-Halperin hierarchy. We derive their topological properties and show that the quasiparticles obey non-Abelian fusion rules of type su(q)k\mathrm{su}{\left(q\right)}_{k}su(q)k​. For a subset of these states we are able to derive the conformal field theory description that makes the topological properties---in particular braiding---of the state manifest. The model states we study provide explicit wave functions for a large variety of interesting topological orders, which may be relevant for certain fractional quantum Hall states observed in the first excited Landau level.
Topological phases exhibit unconventional order that cannot be detected by any local order parameter. In the framework of projected entangled pair states, topological order is characterized by an entanglement symmetry of the local tensor that describes the model. This symmetry can take the form of a tensor product of group representations [for quantum double models D(G)D(G)D(G) of a group G]G]G], or in the more general case a correlated symmetry action in the form of a matrix product operator (MPO), which encompasses all string-net models, including those that are not quantum double models. Among other things, these entanglement symmetries allow for the succinct description of ground states and topological excitations (anyons). Recently, the idea has been put forward to use those symmetries and the anyonic objects they describe as order parameters for probing topological phase transitions, and the applicability of this idea has been demonstrated for Abelian groups. In this paper, we extend this construction to the domain of non-Abelian models with MPO symmetries, and we use it to study the breakdown of topological order in the double Fibonacci (DFib) string-net model and its Galois conjugate, namely the non-Hermitian double Yang-Lee (DYL) string-net model. We start by showing how to construct topological order parameters for condensation and deconfinement of anyons using the MPO symmetries. Subsequently, we set up interpolations from the DFib and the DYL model to the trivial phase, and we show that these can be mapped to certain restricted solid on solid (RSOS) models, which are equivalent to the $[(5\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\sqrt{5})/2]$-state Potts model, respectively. Moreover, the order parameter for condensation maps to the RSOS order parameter. The known exact solutions of the statistical models subsequently allow us to locate the critical points of the models, and to predict the critical exponents for the order parameters from conformal field theory. We complement this by numerical study of the phase transitions, which fully confirms our theoretical predictions; remarkably, we find that both models exhibit a duality between the behavior of order parameters for condensation and deconfinement.
Symmetry-protected topological phases (SPT) are short-range entangled gapped states protected by global symmetry. Nontrivial SPT phases cannot be adiabatically connected to the trivial disordered state (or atomic insulator) as long as certain global symmetry GGG is unbroken. At low energies, most of the two-dimensional SPTs with Abelian symmetry can be described by topological quantum field theory (TQFT) of the multicomponent Chern-Simons type. However, in contrast to the fractional quantum Hall effect where TQFT can give rise to interesting bulk anyons, TQFT for SPTs only supports trivial bulk excitations. The essential question in TQFT descriptions for SPTs is to understand how the global symmetry is implemented in the partition function. In this paper, we systematically study TQFT of three-dimensional SPTs with unitary Abelian symmetry (e.g., ${\mathbb{Z}}_{{N}_{1}}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{{N}_{2}}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}...$). In addition to the usual multicomponent BFBFBF topological term at level-1, we find that there are new topological terms with quantized coefficients (e.g., ${a}^{1}\ensuremath{\wedge}{a}^{2}\ensuremath{\wedge}d{a}^{2}$ and ${a}^{1}\ensuremath{\wedge}{a}^{2}\ensuremath{\wedge}{a}^{3}\ensuremath{\wedge}{a}^{4}$) in TQFT actions, where a1,a2,...{a}^{1},{a}^{2},...a1,a2,... are 1-form U(1) gauge fields. These additional topological terms cannot be adiabatically turned off as long as GGG is unbroken. By investigating symmetry transformations for the TQFT partition function, we end up with the classification of SPTs that is consistent with the well-known group cohomology approach. We also discuss how to gauge the global symmetry and possible TQFT descriptions of Dijkgraaf-Witten gauge theory.