We extend the hidden symmetry breaking picture, first proposed by Kennedy and Tasaki in the context of the Haldane phase, to a wider class of symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases. We construct a generalization of the Kennedy-Tasaki transformation that transforms SPT phases into symmetry-breaking phases and relates long-range order in the latter to the more subtle “string order” in the former. In doing so we directly connect the form of the Kennedy-Tasaki transformation to the modern formulation of SPT order. We apply our generalized Kennedy-Tasaki transformation to solve the following problem in quantum information theory. We consider the 2-D cluster state, a simple “toy model” of a locally interacting system whose ground state is a universal resource for MBQC. We prove that, in the presence of a perturbation to the interaction Hamiltonian, the perturbed ground state remains a universal resource. We do this by using the generalized Kennedy-Tasaki transformation to prove that, if we employ the techniques of fault-tolerant quantum computation, the ground states of models in an appropriate SPT phases can serve as universal resources for MBQC provided that the symmetry-breaking is sufficiently strong in the symmetry-breaking phase obtained through the generalized Kennedy-Tasaki transformation.
Symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases are gapped short-range-entangled quantum phases with a symmetry
G. They can all be smoothly connected to the same trivial product state if we break the symmetry. The Haldane phase of spin-1 chain is the first example of SPT phases which is protected by
SO(3) spin rotation symmetry. The topological insulator is another example of SPT phases which are protected by
U(1) and time-reversal symmetries. In this paper, we show that interacting bosonic SPT phases can be systematically described by group cohomology theory: Distinct
d-dimensional bosonic SPT phases with on-site symmetry
G (which may contain antiunitary time-reversal symmetry) can be labeled by the elements in
H1+d[G,UT(1)], the Borel
(1+d)-group-cohomology classes of
G over the
G module
UT(1). Our theory, which leads to explicit ground-state wave functions and commuting projector Hamiltonians, is based on a new type of topological term that generalizes the topological $\ensuremath{\theta}$ term in continuous nonlinear $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ models to lattice nonlinear $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ models. The boundary excitations of the nontrivial SPT phases are described by lattice nonlinear $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ models with a nonlocal Lagrangian term that generalizes the Wess-Zumino-Witten term for continuous nonlinear $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ models. As a result, the symmetry
G must be realized as a non-on-site symmetry for the low-energy boundary excitations, and those boundary states must be gapless or degenerate. As an application of our result, we can use ${\mathcal{H}}^{1+d}[U(1)\ensuremath{\rtimes}{Z}_{2}^{T},{U}_{T}(1)]$ to obtain interacting bosonic topological insulators (protected by time reversal
Z2T and boson number conservation), which contain one nontrivial phase in one-dimensional (1D) or 2D and three in 3D. We also obtain interacting bosonic topological superconductors (protected by time-reversal symmetry only), in term of
H1+d[Z2T,UT(1)], which contain one nontrivial phase in odd spatial dimensions and none for even dimensions. Our result is much more general than the above two examples, since it is for any symmetry group. For example, we can use ${\mathcal{H}}^{1+d}[U(1)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{Z}_{2}^{T},{U}_{T}(1)]$ to construct the SPT phases of integer spin systems with time-reversal and
U(1) spin rotation symmetry, which contain three nontrivial SPT phases in 1D, none in 2D, and seven in 3D. Even more generally, we find that the different bosonic symmetry breaking short-range-entangled phases are labeled by the following three mathematical objects: $({G}_{H},{G}_{\ensuremath{\Psi}},{\mathcal{H}}^{1+d}[{G}_{\ensuremath{\Psi}},{U}_{T}(1)])$, where
GH is the symmetry group of the Hamiltonian and ${G}_{\ensuremath{\Psi}}$ the symmetry group of the ground states.
Symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases are gapped short-range-entangled quantum phases with a symmetry G. They can all be smoothly connected to the same trivial product state if we break the symmetry. The Haldane phase of spin-1 chain is the first example of SPT phase which is protected by SO(3) spin rotation symmetry. The topological insulator is another exam- ple of SPT phase which is protected by U(1) and time reversal symmetries. It has been shown that free fermion SPT phases can be systematically described by the K-theory. In this paper, we show that interacting bosonic SPT phases can be systematically described by group cohomology theory: distinct d-dimensional bosonic SPT phases with on-site symmetry G (which may contain anti-unitary time reversal symmetry) can be labeled by the elements in H^{1+d}[G, U_T(1)] - the Borel (1 + d)-group-cohomology classes of G over the G-module U_T(1). The boundary excitations of the non-trivial SPT phases are gapless or degenerate. Even more generally, we find that the different bosonic symmetry breaking short-range-entangled phases are labeled by the following three mathematical objects: (G_H, G_{\Psi}, H^{1+d}[G_{\Psi}, U_T(1)], where G_H is the symmetry group of the Hamiltonian and G_{\Psi} the symmetry group of the ground states.
Focusing on the particular case of the discrete symmetry group ${\mathbb{Z}}_{N}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{N}$, we establish a mapping between symmetry-protected topological phases and symmetry-broken phases for one-dimensional spin systems. It is realized in terms of a nonlocal unitary transformation which preserves the locality of the Hamiltonian. We derive the image of the mapping for various phases involved, including those with a mixture of symmetry breaking and topological protection. Our analysis also applies to topological phases in spin systems with arbitrary continuous symmetries of unitary, orthogonal, and symplectic type. This is achieved by identifying suitable subgroups ${\mathbb{Z}}_{N}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{N}$ in all these groups, together with a bijection between the individual classes of projective representations.
Since the discovery of phase transitions driven by topological defects, the classification of phases of matter has been significantly extended beyond Ginzburg and Landau's paradigm of spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB). In particular, intrinsic and symmetry-protected topological (SPT) orders have been discovered in (mostly gapped) quantum many-body ground states. However, these are commonly viewed as zero-temperature phenomena, and their robustness in a gapless ground state or against thermal fluctuations remains challenging to tackle. Here we introduce an explicit construction for SPT-type states with hidden order associated with SSB: They feature (quasi-)long-range correlations along appropriate edges but short-range order in the bulk, ground state degeneracy associated with SSB, and nonlocal string order in the bulk. We apply our construction to predict two types of finite-temperature SPT transitions protected by 1-form symmetries in the Ising and BKT class, respectively, where the usual signs of criticality appear despite the absence of a diverging correlation length in the bulk. While the state featuring hidden Ising order is gapped, the other SPT state associated with the BKT-SPT transition has hidden U ( 1 ) or XY order and constitutes an intrinsically gapless SPT state, associated with a gapless Goldstone mode. Specifically, in this work we discuss spins with global Z 2 or U ( 1 ) symmetry coupled to link variables constituting a loop gas model with a 1-form symmetry. By mapping this system to an Ising-gauge theory, we demonstrate that one of the SPT phases we construct corresponds to the Higgs-SPT phase at T = 0 – which we show here to remain stable at finite temperature. Our work paves the way for a more systematic search for hidden order SPT phases, including in gapless systems, and raises the question if a natural (finite- T ) spin liquid candidate exists that realizes hidden order in the Higgs-SPT class.
We propose an order parameter for the symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases which are protected by Abelian on-site symmetries. This order parameter, called the SPT entanglement, is defined as the entanglement between
A and
B, two distant regions of the system, given that the total charge (associated with the symmetry) in a third region
C is measured and known, where
C is a connected region surrounded by
A,B, and the boundaries of the system. In the case of one-dimensional systems we prove that in the limit where
A and
B are large and far from each other compared to the correlation length, the SPT entanglement remains constant throughout a SPT phase, and furthermore, it is zero for the trivial phase while it is nonzero for all the nontrivial phases. Moreover, we show that the SPT entanglement is invariant under the low-depth quantum circuits which respect the symmetry, and hence it remains constant throughout a SPT phase in the higher dimensions as well. Also, we show that there is an intriguing connection between SPT entanglement and the Fourier transform of the string order parameters, which are the traditional tool for detecting SPT phases. This leads to an algorithm for extracting the relevant information about the SPT phase of the system from the string order parameters. Finally, we discuss implications of our results in the context of measurement-based quantum computation.