Some interfaces between two different topologically ordered systems can be gapped. In earlier work it was shown that such gapped interfaces can themselves be effective one-dimensional topological systems that possess localized topological modes in open boundary geometries. Here we focus on how this occurs in the context of an interface between two single-component Laughlin states of opposite chirality, with filling fractions ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{1}=1/p$ and ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{2}=1/p{n}^{2}$. While one type of interface in such systems was previously studied, we show that allowing for edge reconstruction effects opens up a wide variety of possible gapped interfaces depending on the number of divisors of
n. We apply a complementary description of the ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{2}=1/p{n}^{2}$ system in terms of Laughlin states coupled to a discrete gauge
Zn field. This enables us to identify possible interfaces to the ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{1}$ system based on complete or partial confinement of this gauge field. We determine the tunneling properties, the ground-state degeneracy, and the nature of the non-Abelian zero modes of each interface in order to physically distinguish them.
Quantum phases of matter can be classified into two kinds: gapped or gapless, depending on whether the equilibrium ground state is separated from excited states by a finite energy window or not in the thermodynamic limit. Topology has played an important role in the understanding of both gapped and gapless phases of matter. This thesis uncovers several robust physical properties of both kinds of systems which are largely unexplored before. \\ For gapped systems, we study topological orders, which are characterized by the existence of anyonic quasiparticles with fractional braiding statistics. In the first part, we introduce a family of Abelian quantum Hall insulators, at filling factors
ν=p/2q for bosonic systems and
ν=p/(p+2q) for fermionic systems, with
p and
q being two coprime integers. These states are termed the \textit{nondiagonal} quantum Hall states, which are constructed in a coupled wire model that exhibits an intimate relation to the nondiagonal conformal field theory and has a constrained pattern of motion for anyons. We unveil a nontrivial interplay between charge symmetry and translation symmetry in this system, and establish the nondiagonal quantum Hall states as symmetry-enriched topological orders. In the second part, we introduce a related model of interacting electrons, but in the absence of a strong quantizing magnetic field, known as the \textit{toric code insulator}. It is constructed from a two-dimensional array of strongly coupled one-dimensional topological superconductors, which feature electron fractionalization and possesses anyonic excitations described by the
Z2 topological order. The motion of anyons is again constrained, and different types of anyons can be related by the translation symmetry. Nondiagonal quantum Hall states and the toric code insulator are convincing examples that itinerant electronic systems can realize interesting symmetry-enriched topological orders.\\ For gapless quantum matters we focus on a particularly familiar class, the metals, but we uncover their topological aspects which were much less appreciated. Every metal is characterized by a Fermi surface of gapless excitations, and the Fermi surface surrounds a manifold in the momentum space, known as the Fermi sea. The ground state of a non-interacting metal, or a Fermi gas, consists of all single-electron states within the Fermi sea. The shape of the Fermi sea has a natural topological characterization in terms of the Euler characteristic
χF, and a fundamental question that we address in this thesis is: \textbf{does
χF imply any robust physical properties in metals, and how can they be measured?} In the third part of the thesis,
χF is connected to physically measurable quantities, such as equal-time density-density correlation functions, and multipartite entanglement measures, such as the mutual information. Particularly, for three dimensions, we establish that the 4-partite mutual information is a robust probe of the Fermi sea topology even in the presence of Fermi-liquid interactions. In the last part, we focus on two dimensions, and propose an experimentally accessible platform to probe
χF for any two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) that respects time-reversal symmetry. The proposed experimental setup is a Josephson
π-junction, and we predict that the electrical transport in the direction \textit{along} the junction exhibits a current-rectification effect that is controlled by the underlying Fermi sea topology. Due to the relation to Andreev state transport, we term this effect \textit{topological Andreev rectification}. The size of rectification is quantified by a \textit{nonlocal rectified conductance}, which is established to attain an integer quantized value that equals
χF (in unit of
e2/h). Extensive numerical simulations are performed to support our theoretical proposal, and material platforms such as InAs heterostructures and graphene are identified as promising candidates to demonstrate this effect.
Systems with topologically protected ground-state degeneracies are currently of great interest due to their potential applications in quantum computing. In practice, this degeneracy is never exact, and the magnitude of the ground-state degeneracy splitting imposes constraints on the time scales over which information is topologically protected. In this Letter, we use an instanton approach to evaluate the splitting of topological ground-state degeneracy in quasi-1D systems with parafermion zero modes, in the specific case where parafermions are realized by inducing a superconducting gap in pairs of fractional quantum Hall edges. We show that, like 1D topological superconducting wires, this splitting has an oscillatory dependence on the chemical potential, which arises from an intrinsic Berry phase that produces interference between distinct instanton tunneling events. These Berry phases can be mapped to chiral phases in a (dual) quantum clock model using a Fradkin-Kadanoff transformation. Comparing our low-energy spectrum to that of phenomenological parafermion models allows us to evaluate the real and imaginary parts of the hopping integral between adjacent parafermionic zero modes as functions of the chemical potential.
Recently, it has been proposed that exotic one-dimensional phases can be realized by gapping out the edge states of a fractional topological insulator. The low-energy edge degrees of freedom are described by a chain of coupled parafermions. We introduce a classification scheme for the phases that can occur in parafermionic chains. We find that the parafermions support both topological symmetry fractionalized phases as well as phases in which the parafermions condense. In the presence of additional symmetries, the phases form a non-Abelian group. As a concrete example of the classification, we consider the effective edge model for a $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/3$ fractional topological insulator for which we calculate the entanglement spectra numerically and show that all possible predicted phases can be realized.
In this paper, we construct an exactly solvable lattice Hamiltonian model to investigate the properties of a composite system consisting of multiple topological orders separated by gapped domain walls. There are interdomain elementary excitations labeled by a pair of anyons in different domains of this system; This system also has elementary excitations with quasiparticles in the gapped domain wall. Each set of elementary excitations corresponds to a basis of the ground states of this composite system on the torus, reflecting that the ground-state degeneracy matches the number of either set of elementary excitations. The characteristic properties of this composite system lie in the basis transformations, represented by the S S and T T matrices: The S S matrix encodes the mutual statistics between interdomain excitations and domain-wall quasiparticles, and the T T matrix encapsulates the topological spins of interdomain excitations. Our model realizes a spatial counterpart of a temporal phase transition triggered by anyon condensation, bringing the abstract theory of anyon condensation into manifestable spatial interdomain excitation states.
Symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases are gapped quantum phases which host symmetry-protected gapless edge excitations. On the other hand, the edge states can be gapped by spontaneously breaking symmetry. We show that topological defects on the symmetry-broken edge cannot proliferate due to their fractional statistics. A gapped symmetric boundary, however, can be achieved between an SPT phase and certain fractionalized phases by condensing the bound state of a topological defect and an anyon. We demonstrate this by two examples in two dimensions: an exactly solvable model for the boundary between a topological Ising paramagnet and the double-semion model, and a fermionic example about the quantum spin Hall edge. Such a hybrid structure containing both SPT phase and fractionalized phase generally support ground-state degeneracy on a torus.