This dissertation discusses some applications of conformal field theories (CFTs) in topological phases of matter. The first part is devoted to a discussion of coupled wire constructions of some novel quantum Hall systems. Through a theoretical coupled wire model, we construct strongly correlated electronic integer quantum Hall states with filling factor 16. The edge state is a bosonic chiral (E8)1 CFT, which is closely related to topological paramagnets in (3+1)d. As a distinguishing feature, these states support electric and thermal Hall transport violating the Wiedemann-Franz law. We further construct two descendant non-Abelian quantum Hall states at filling 8, each carrying bosonic chiral (G2)1 or (F4)1 edge theories, and hosting Fibonacci anyonic excitations in the bulk. Finally, we discover a new notion of particle-hole conjugation based on the E8 state that relates the G2 and F4 Fibonacci states, which is reminiscent of similar physics in half-filled Landau level. The second part is focused on the surface topological orders of 3D bulk topological systems. Symmetry protected and symmetry-enriched topological (SPT/SET) phases in three dimensions are quantum systems that support non-trivial two-dimensional surface states. These surface states develop finite excitation energy gaps when the relevant symmetries are broken. On the other hand, one-dimensional gapless modes can populate along interfaces that separate adjacent gapped surface domains with distinct symmetry-breaking orders. A surface strip pattern in general reduces the low-energy SPT/SET surface degrees of freedom onto a 2D array of gapless 1D channels. These channels can be coupled to one another by quasiparticle tunneling, and these inter-wire interactions collectively provide an effective description of the surface state. In this part, we study a general class of symmetry-preserving or breaking SPT/SET surface states that admit finite excitation energy gaps and Abelian topological orders via the coupled wire construction. In particular, we focus on the prototype Abelian surface topological orders that fall under the ADE classification of simply-laced Lie algebras. We also elaborate on the emergent symmetry and duality properties of the coupled wire models. The third part is to discuss the relation between the conformal boundary state and (2+1)d SPT phases. We propose a diagnostic tool for detecting nontrivial symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases protected by a symmetry group G in 2 + 1 dimensions. Our method is based on directly studying the 1 + 1-dimensional anomalous edge conformal field theory (CFT) of SPT phases. We claim that if the CFT is the edge theory of an SPT phase, then there must be an obstruction to cutting it open. This obstruction manifests as the non-existence of boundary states in the CFT that preserves both the conformal symmetry and the global symmetry G. We discuss the relation between edgeability and gappability in the presence of G. We study several examples including time-reversal symmetric topological insulators, ZN symmetric bosonic SPT phases, and Z2 × Z2 symmetric topological superconductors.
We study the classification of the gapped phases or massive renormalization group (RG) flows dual to the massless RG flows under changing the sign of the coupling constants. Whereas our formalism is based on combining Higgs- or Nambu-Goldstone-type arguments with Cardy's smeared boundary conformal field theories (SBCFTs), several puzzling structures arise. More specifically, the established Higgs or Nambu-Goldstone type arguments on the duality imply that the natural basis for the gapped states should be constructed from a set of smeared Ishibashi states, which are unphysical in boundary critical phenomena. Hence, the module of the gapped phases can be outside of that of boundary critical phenomena, whereas one can still calculate characterizing quantities by applying SBCFTs to the models. For example, we demonstrate that the massive RG flow dual to the massless RG flow from the tricritical Ising model to the Ising model, one of the simplest massless RG flows, has this unusual structure. This can be regarded as a quantum field-theoretic analogue of order-disorder coexistence in lattice models. More generally, the resultant gapped phases usually spontaneously break non-group-like symmetry (or noninvertible symmetry). Our work provides systematic quantum field theoretic descriptions of such unusual phases with spontaneous symmetry breaking of non-group-like (or noninvertible) symmetries.
In this work, we give a mathematical description of a chiral gapless edge of a 2d topological order (without symmetry). We show that the observables on the 1+1D world sheet of such an edge consist of a family of topological edge excitations, boundary CFT's and walls between boundary CFT's. These observables can be described by a chiral algebra and an enriched monoidal category. This mathematical description automatically includes that of gapped edges as special cases. Therefore, it gives a unified framework to study both gapped and gapless edges. Moreover, the boundary-bulk duality also holds for gapless edges. More precisely, the unitary modular tensor category that describes the 2d bulk phase is exactly the Drinfeld center of the enriched monoidal category that describes the gapless/gapped edge. We propose a classification of all gapped and chiral gapless edges of a given bulk phase. In the end, we explain how modular-invariant bulk rational conformal field theories naturally emerge on certain gapless walls between two trivial phases.
We study conformal field theories (CFTs) and their classifications from a modern perspective based on the abstract algebraic formalism of symmetries or conserved charges, known as symmetry topological field theories (SymTFTs). By studying the algebraic structure of the SymTFTs in detail, we found a natural generalization of the quantum dimensions associated with (pseudo-)Hermitian systems and (non)-unitary CFTs. These generalized data of SymTFTs provide classifications of massless and massive renormalization group flows, which will describe the quantum phase transitions of the corresponding pseudo-Hermitian systems. Moreover, our discussions straightforwardly enable one to relate a general class of coset constructions or level-rank dualities to domain wall problems between topological quantum field theories (or a series of corresponding quantum phase transitions related to the Higgs mechanism). Our work provides a systematic reduction and classification of algebraic data, symmetries, for pseudo-Hermitian systems based on ideas from established mathematical fields, linear algebra and ring theory.
We analyze
2+1d and
3+1d bosonic symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases of matter protected by onsite symmetry group
G by using dual bulk and boundary approaches. In the bulk, we study an effective field theory, which upon coupling to a background flat
G gauge field furnishes a purely topological response theory. The response action evaluated on certain manifolds, with appropriate choice of background gauge field, defines a set of SPT topological invariants. Further, SPTs can be gauged by summing over all isomorphism classes of flat
G gauge fields to obtain Dijkgraaf-Witten topological
G gauge theories. These topological gauge theories can be ungauged by first introducing and then proliferating defects that spoil the gauge symmetry. This mechanism is related to anyon condensation in
2+1d and condensing bosonic gauge charges in
3+1d. In the dual boundary approach, we study
1+1d and
2+1d quantum field theories that have
G 't-Hooft anomalies that can be precisely canceled by (the response theory of) the corresponding bulk SPT. We show how to construct/compute topological invariants for the bulk SPTs directly from the boundary theories. Further, we sum over boundary partition functions with different background gauge fields to construct
G characters that generate topological data for the bulk topological gauge theory. Finally, we study a
2+1d quantum field theory with a mixed ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}^{T/R}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\text{U}(1)$ anomaly where
Z2T/R is time-reversal/reflection symmetry, and the
U(1) could be a 0-form or 1-form symmetry depending on the choice of time reversal/reflection action. We briefly discuss the bulk effective action and topological response for a theory in
3+1d that cancels this anomaly. This signals the existence of SPTs in
3+1d protected by 0,1-form $\text{U}(1)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}^{T,R}$.
We propose using smeared boundary states e^{-\tau H}|\cal B\rangle as variational approximations to the ground state of a conformal field theory deformed by relevant bulk operators. This is motivated by recent studies of quantum quenches in CFTs and of the entanglement spectrum in massive theories. It gives a simple criterion for choosing which boundary state should correspond to which combination of bulk operators, and leads to a rudimentary phase diagram of the theory in the vicinity of the RG fixed point corresponding to the CFT, as well as rigorous upper bounds on the universal amplitude of the free energy. In the case of the 2d minimal models explicit formulae are available. As a side result we show that the matrix elements of bulk operators between smeared Ishibashi states are simply given by the fusion rules of the CFT.