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arXiv:1204.0113 · Physical Review B

Projective non-Abelian statistics of dislocation defects in a ZN rotor model

Yi‐Zhuang You, Xiao-Gang Wen

Published Oct 17, 2012• 126 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Non-Abelian statistics is a phenomenon of topologically protected non-Abelian geometric phases as we exchange quasiparticle excitations. Here we construct a ${\mathbb{Z}}_{N}$ rotor model that realizes a self-dual ${\mathbb{Z}}_{N}$ Abelian gauge theory. We find that lattice dislocation defects in the model produce topologically protected degeneracy. Even though dislocations are not quasiparticle excitations, they resemble non-Abelian anyons with quantum dimension $\sqrt{N}$. Exchanging dislocations can produce topologically protected projective non-Abelian geometric phases. Therefore, we discover a kind of (projective) non-Abelian anyon that appears as the dislocations in an Abelian ${\mathbb{Z}}_{N}$ rotor model. These types of non-Abelian anyons can be viewed as a generalization of the Majorana zero modes.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.86.161107

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Non-Abelian statistics is a phenomenon of topologically protected non-Abelian geometric phases as we exchange quasiparticle excitations. Here we construct a ZN{\mathbb{Z}}_{N}ZN​ rotor model that realizes a self-dual ZN{\mathbb{Z}}_{N}ZN​ Abelian gauge theory. We find that lattice dislocation defects in the model produce topologically protected degeneracy. Even though dislocations are not quasiparticle excitations, they resemble non-Abelian anyons with quantum dimension N\sqrt{N}N​. Exchanging dislocations can produce topologically protected projective non-Abelian geometric phases. Therefore, we discover a kind of (projective) non-Abelian anyon that appears as the dislocations in an Abelian ZN{\mathbb{Z}}_{N}ZN​ rotor model. These types of non-Abelian anyons can be viewed as a generalization of the Majorana zero modes.
Topological degeneracy is the degeneracy of the ground states in a many-body system in the large-system-size limit. Topological degeneracy cannot be lifted by any local perturbation of the Hamiltonian. The topological degeneracies on closed manifolds have been used to discover/define topological order in many-body systems, which contain excitations with fractional statistics. In this paper, we study a new type of topological degeneracy induced by condensing anyons along a line in two-dimensional topological ordered states. Such topological degeneracy can be viewed as carried by each end of the line defect, which is a generalization of Majorana zero modes. The topological degeneracy can be used as a quantum memory. The ends of line defects carry projective non-Abelian statistics even though they are produced by the condensation of Abelian anyons, and braiding them allows us to perform fault tolerant quantum computations.
We examine non-Abelian topological defects in an Abelian lattice model in two dimensions. We first construct an exact solvable lattice model that exhibits coexisting and intertwined topological and classical orders. The anyon types of quasiparticle excitations are permuted by lattice symmetry operations like translations, rotations, and reflections. The global anyon permutation symmetry has a group structure of S3{S}_{3}S3​, the permutation group of three elements. Topological crystalline defects---dislocations and disclinations---change the anyon type of an orbiting quasiparticle. They exhibit multichannel order-dependent fusion rules and projective braiding operations. Their braiding and exchange statistics breaks modular invariance and violates the conventional spin-statistics theorem. We develop a framework to characterize these unconventional properties that originate from the semiclassical nature of defects.
The Kitaev honeycomb lattice system is an important model of topological materials whose phase diagram exhibits both abelian and non-abelian topological phases. The latter, a so-called Ising phase, is related to topological superconductors. Its quasiparticle excitations, which are formed by Majorana fermions attached to vortices, show non-abelian fractional statistics and are known as Ising anyons. We investigate dislocation defects in the Ising phase of the Kitaev honeycomb model. After introducing them to the system, we accordingly generalize our solution of this model to the situation with the defects. The important part of this effort is developing an appropriate Jordan-Wigner fermionization procedure. It is expected that the presence of defects manifests itself by the formation of fermionic zero-energy modes around the defect end points. We numerically confirm this expectation and further investigate properties of these modes. The computational potential of our technique is demonstrated for both diagonalization and dynamical simulations. The latter focuses on the process of fusion of the vortex zero-energy modes with the Majorana fermions attached to the defect. This process simulates fusion of non-abelian Ising anyons.
It has recently been realized that a general class of non-Abelian defects can be created in conventional topological states by introducing extrinsic defects, such as lattice dislocations or superconductor-ferromagnet domain walls in conventional quantum Hall states or topological insulators. In this paper, we begin by placing these defects within the broader conceptual scheme of extrinsic twist defects associated with symmetries of the topological state. We explicitly study several classes of examples, including Z2{Z}_{2}Z2​ and Z3{Z}_{3}Z3​ twist defects, where the topological state with NNN twist defects can be mapped to a topological state without twist defects on a genus $g\ensuremath{\propto}N$ surface. To emphasize this connection we refer to the twist defects as genons. We develop methods to compute the projective non-Abelian braiding statistics of the genons, and we find the braiding is given by adiabatic modular transformations, or Dehn twists, of the topological state on the effective genus ggg surface. We study the relation between this projective braiding statistics and the ordinary non-Abelian braiding statistics obtained when the genons become deconfined, finite-energy excitations. We find that the braiding is generally different, in contrast to the Majorana case, which opens the possibility for fundamentally novel behavior. We find situations where the genons have quantum dimension 2 and can be used for universal topological quantum computing (TQC), while the host topological state is by itself nonuniversal for TQC.
Non-Abelian anyons are exotic quasiparticle excitations hosted by certain topological phases of matter. They break the fermion-boson dichotomy and obey non-Abelian braiding statistics: their interchanges yield unitary operations, rather than merely a phase factor, in a space spanned by topologically degenerate wavefunctions. They are the building blocks of topological quantum computing. However, experimental observation of non-Abelian anyons and their characterizing braiding statistics is notoriously challenging and has remained elusive hitherto, in spite of various theoretical proposals. Here, we report an experimental quantum digital simulation of projective non-Abelian anyons and their braiding statistics with up to 68 programmable superconducting qubits arranged on a two-dimensional lattice. By implementing the ground states of the toric-code model with twists through quantum circuits, we demonstrate that twists exchange electric and magnetic charges and behave as a particular type of non-Abelian anyons, i.e., the Ising anyons. In particular, we show experimentally that these twists follow the fusion rules and non-Abelian braiding statistics of the Ising type, and can be explored to encode topological logical qubits. Furthermore, we demonstrate how to implement both single- and two-qubit logic gates through applying a sequence of elementary Pauli gates on the underlying physical qubits. Our results demonstrate a versatile quantum digital approach for simulating non-Abelian anyons, offering a new lens into the study of such peculiar quasiparticles.
Liquid crystalline defects in 3D can be viewed as geometric spinors, whose emergent properties are reminiscent of those of topological excitations in quantum condensed matter, such as Majorana quasiparticles. However, it is unclear how deep this analogy is, and whether this is a purely mathematical mapping, or it extends to key physical features, such as the exchange statistics or braiding behaviour. To address this question, here we consider a simple pattern made up of four nematic Majorana-like defect profiles, and ask how the defect profiles change as we braid them repeatedly around each other. Surprisingly, we find that in a large range of parameter space the defect profiles behave as classical analogues of non-Abelian anyons, which can be described in our case by defect bivectors moving on a Bloch-like hemisphere. Elastic interactions and dynamical effects enhance the complexity of the gates which can be performed by braiding these quasiparticles, making these liquid crystalline spinors promising candidates as components of topological computers.