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arXiv:2104.06853 · Journal of Statistical Mechanics Theory and Experiment

Novel quantum phases on graphs using abelian gauge theory

Pramod Padmanabhan, Fumihiko Sugino

Published Oct 1, 2021• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Graphs are topological spaces that include broader objects than discretized manifolds, making them interesting playgrounds for the study of quantum phases not realized by symmetry breaking. In particular they are known to support anyons of an even richer variety than the two-dimensional space. We explore this possibility by building a class of frustration-free and gapped Hamiltonians based on discrete abelian gauge groups. The resulting models have a ground state degeneracy that can be either a topological invariant, an extensive quantity or a mixture of the two. For two basis of the degenerate ground states which are complementary in quantum theory, the entanglement entropy (EE) is exactly computed. The result for one basis has a constant global term, known as the topological EE, implying long-range entanglement. On the other hand, the topological EE vanishes in the result for the other basis. Comparisons are made with similar occurrences in the toric code. We analyze excitations and identify anyon-like excitations that account for the topological EE. An analogy between the ground states of this system and the θ -vacuum for a U (1) gauge theory on a circle is also drawn.

DOI
10.1088/1742-5468/ac25f7

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Abstract Graphs are topological spaces that include broader objects than discretized manifolds, making them interesting playgrounds for the study of quantum phases not realized by symmetry breaking. In particular they are known to support anyons of an even richer variety than the two-dimensional space. We explore this possibility by building a class of frustration-free and gapped Hamiltonians based on discrete abelian gauge groups. The resulting models have a ground state degeneracy that can be either a topological invariant, an extensive quantity or a mixture of the two. For two basis of the degenerate ground states which are complementary in quantum theory, the entanglement entropy (EE) is exactly computed. The result for one basis has a constant global term, known as the topological EE, implying long-range entanglement. On the other hand, the topological EE vanishes in the result for the other basis. Comparisons are made with similar occurrences in the toric code. We analyze excitations and identify anyon-like excitations that account for the topological EE. An analogy between the ground states of this system and the θ -vacuum for a U (1) gauge theory on a circle is also drawn.
Topological order is a new paradigm for quantum phases of matter developed to explain phase transitions which do not fit the symmetry breaking scheme for classifying phases of matter. They are characterized by patterns of entanglement that lead to topologically depended ground state degeneracy and anyonic excitations. One common approach for studying such phases in two-dimensional systems is through exactly solvable lattice Hamiltonian models such as quantum double models and String-Net models. The former can be understood as the Hamiltonian formulation of lattice gauge theories and, as such, it is defined by a finite gauge group. However, not much is known about topological phases in tridimensional systems. Motivated by this we develop a new class of three-dimensional exactly solvable models which go beyond quantum double models by using finite crossed modules instead of gauge groups. This approach relies on a lattice implementation of 2-gauge theory to obtain models with a richer topological structure. We construct the Hamiltonian model explicitly and provide a rigorous proof that the ground state degeneracy is a topological invariant and that the ground states can only be characterized with nonlocal order parameters.
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Condensation of quantum loops naturally leads to topological phases with Abelian excitations. Here, I propose that non-Abelian topological phases can arise from merging two (or several) identical Abelian quantum loop condensates. I define merging through a symmetrization operation, which makes the two loop condensates indistinguishable, inducing the possibility of a topological degeneracy in the space of quasiparticles. To illustrate the construction, the case of two identical toric-code quantum loop gases is considered. A spin-1 model for the two-dimensional square lattice is presented for which the resulting merged state is the exact unique ground state. This Hamiltonian involves four-body interactions between spins located at the same plaquette or vertex, which are quadratic in the spin-1 operators. Vertex and plaquette interaction terms are not mutually commuting. The model displays gapped excitations that result from merging anyons in both toric-code copies. These excitations exhibit non-Abelian braiding properties.
The most general description of a quantum many-body system is given by a wave- function that lives in a Hilbert space with dimension exponential in the number of particles. This makes it extremely hard to study strongly correlated phenomena like the fractional quantum Hall effect and high-temperature superconductivity. Whenever interactions are sufficiently local and temperature is low, the system does not explore the full Hilbert space, but its ground state resides in the small corner of Hilbert space described by the area law. Containing little entanglement, the states can then be expressed as tensor networks, a family of wavefunctions with a polynomial number of parameters. On the one hand, tensor networks can be used as a variational manifold in nu- merical computations. On the other hand, they allow building model wavefunctions much like locality allows writing down physically realistic Hamiltonians. Besides allowing for an analytical treatment, these models grant access both to the physical and the entanglement degrees of freedom. This is particularly useful in classifying phases of matter. A large number of phases can be explained in terms of Landau’s symmetry-breaking paradigm. This framework, however, is not complete, as exemplified by the existence of phases with intrinsic topological order in two dimensions. It was a major conceptual advance when tensor networks could explain (non-chiral) topological phases as those where the symmetry resides in the entanglement degrees of freedom. The symmetries corresponding to those topological phases act as discrete, finite groups on the virtual degrees of freedom. The purpose of this Thesis is to generalize this program to include other symmetries. We investigate a class of tensor networks with continuous symmetries and find that they cannot describe gapped physics with a unique ground state. The abelian case is found to describe a non-Lorentz invariant phase transition point into a topologically ordered phase. The physics of the non- abelian case is that of a plaquette state that spontaneously breaks the translation symmetry of the lattice. The non-abelian PEPS arises as the ground state of a local parent Hamiltonian whose ground state manifold is completely characterized by the tensor network. In both cases, we find two types of corrections to the entanglement entropy: first there is a correction that is logarithmic in the size of the boundary and independent of the shape. A further correction depends only on the shape of the partition, imposing further restrictions on regions that are suffciently thin. Finally, we investigate symmetries that mix the virtual with the physical degrees of freedom and are furthermore anisotropic. Their physics is described by subsystem symmetry protected topological order. In particular, we focus on the entanglement entropy in the cluster phase and show that there is a universal constant correction to the entropy throughout the phase. This is important in the program of establishing the entanglement entropy as a detection mechanism for topologically ordered phases. We put forward a numerical algorithm to compute the correction and use it to discover a novel phase of matter in which the cluster phase is embedded.
Topological order is a new paradigm for quantum phases of matter developed to explain phase transitions which do not fit the symmetry breaking scheme for classifying phases of matter. They are characterized by patterns of entanglement that lead to topologically depended ground state degeneracy and anyonic excitations. One common approach for studying such phases in two-dimensional systems is through exactly solvable lattice Hamiltonian models such as quantum double models and String-Net models. The former can be understood as the Hamiltonian formulation of lattice gauge theories and, as such, it is defined by a finite gauge group. However, not much is known about topological phases in tridimensional systems. Motivated by this we develop a new class of three-dimensional exactly solvable models which go beyond quantum double models by using finite crossed modules instead of gauge groups. This approach relies on a lattice implementation of 2-gauge theory to obtain models with a richer topological structure. We construct the Hamiltonian model explicitly and provide a rigorous proof that the ground state degeneracy is a topological invariant and that the ground states can only be characterized with nonlocal order parameters.
In this comprehensive study of Kitaev’s abelian models defined on a graph embedded on a closed orientable surface, we provide complete proofs of the topological ground state degeneracy, the absence of local order parameters, compute the entanglement entropy exactly and characterize the elementary anyonic excitations. The homology and cohomology groups of the cell complex play a central role and allow for a rigorous understanding of the relations between the above characterizations of topological order.