We propose a general approach to construct symmetry protected topological (SPT) states i.e the short-range entangled states with symmetry) in 2D spin/boson systems on lattice. In our approach, we fractionalize spins/bosons into different fermions, which occupy nontrivial Chern bands. After the Gutzwiller projection of the free fermion state obtained by filling the Chern bands, we can obtain SPT states on lattice. In particular, we constructed a U(1) SPT state of a spin-1 model, a SO(3) SPT state of a boson system with spin-1 bosons and spinless bosons, and a SU(2) SPT state of a spin-1/2 boson system. By applying the gauge field which directly couples to the spin density and spin current of
Sz components, we also calculate the quantum spin Hall conductance in each SPT state. The projective ground states can be further studied numerically in the future by variational Monte Carlo etc.
We propose a general approach to construct symmetry protected topological (SPT) states (i.e., the short-range entangled states with symmetry) in 2D spin/boson systems on lattice. In our approach, we fractionalize spins/bosons into different fermions, which occupy nontrivial Chern bands. After the Gutzwiller projection of the free fermion state obtained by filling the Chern bands, we can obtain SPT states on lattice. In particular, we constructed a U(1) SPT state of a spin-1 model, a SO(3) SPT state of a boson system with spin-1 bosons and spinless bosons, and a SU(2) SPT state of a spin-1/2 boson system. By applying the ``spin gauge field'' which directly couples to the spin density and spin current of
Sz components, we also calculate the quantum spin Hall conductance in each SPT state. The projective ground states can be further studied numerically in the future by variational Monte Carlo etc.
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) states are short-range entangled states with symmetry. The boundary of a SPT phases has either gapless excitations or degenerate ground states, around a gapped bulk. Recently, we proposed a systematic construction of SPT phases in interacting bosonic systems, however it is not very clear what is the form of the low-energy excitations on the gapless edge. In this paper, we answer this question for two-dimensional (2D) bosonic SPT phases with
ZN and
U(1) symmetry. We find that while the low-energy modes of the gapless edges are nonchiral, symmetry acts on them in a ``chiral'' way, i.e., acts on the right movers and the left movers differently. This special realization of symmetry protects the gaplessness of the otherwise unstable edge states by prohibiting a direct scattering between the left and right movers. Moreover, understanding of the low-energy effective theory leads to experimental predictions about the SPT phases. In particular, we find that all the 2D
U(1) SPT phases have even integer quantized Hall conductance.
We implement the universal wave-function overlap (UWFO) method to extract modular
S and
T matrices for topological orders in Gutzwiller-projected parton wave functions (GPWFs). The modular
S and
T matrices generate a projective representation of
SL(2,Z) on the degenerate-ground-state Hilbert space on a torus and may fully characterize the 2+1D topological orders, i.e., the quasiparticle statistics and chiral central charge (up to
E8 bosonic quantum Hall states). We use the variational Monte Carlo method to computed the
S and
T matrices of the chiral spin liquid (CSL) constructed by the GPWF on the square lattice, and we confirm that the CSL carries the same topological order as the $\ensuremath{\nu}=\frac{1}{2}$ bosonic Laughlin state. We find that the nonuniversal exponents in the UWFO can be small, and direct numerical computation can be applied on relatively large systems. The UWFO may be a powerful method to calculate the topological order in GPWFs.
Symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases with gapless edge excitations have been shown to exist in strongly interacting bosonic/fermionic systems and it is highly desirable to identify practical systems realizing such phases through numerical simulation. A central question to be addressed is how to determine the SPT order in the system given the simulation result, while no local order parameter can be measured to distinguish the phases from a trivial one. In the tensor network approach to simulate strongly interacting systems, the quantum state renormalization algorithm has been shown to be effective in identifying intrinsic topological orders. Here, we show that a modified algorithm can identify SPT orders by extracting the symmetry-protected fixed point entanglement pattern in the ground-state wave function, which is essential for the existence of SPT order. The key to this approach is to add proper symmetry protection to the renormalization process. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this algorithm with examples of nontrivial SPT phases with internal symmetry in 1D and internal and translation symmetry in 2D.