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arXiv:2512.20697

Simulating fermionic fractional Chern insulators with infinite projected entangled-pair states

Hao Chen, Titus Neupert, Juraj Hasik

cond-mat.str-elquant-phSubmitted Dec 23, 2025• Announced Dec 25, 2025• 0 citations• Revised Feb 16, 2026 (v2)
v1 · Dec 23, 2025v2 · Feb 16, 2026v3 · May 28, 2026
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Abstract

Infinite projected entangled-pair states (iPEPS) provide a powerful variational framework for two-dimensional quantum matter and have been widely used to capture bosonic topological order, including chiral spin liquids. Here we extend this approach to \emph{fermionic} topological order by variationally optimizing $U(1)$-symmetric fermionic iPEPS for a fractional Chern insulator (FCI), with bond dimensions up to $D=9$. We find evidence for a critical bond dimension, above which the ansatz faithfully represents the FCI phase. The FCI state is characterized using bulk observables, including the equal-time single-particle Green's function and the pair-correlation function, as well as the momentum-resolved edge entanglement spectrum. To enable entanglement-spectrum calculations for large iPEPS unit cells, we introduce a compression scheme and show that the low-lying part of the spectrum is already well converged at relatively small cutoff dimensions.

Comments
10 pages, 14 figures

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Infinite projected entangled-pair states (iPEPS) provide a powerful variational framework for two-dimensional quantum matter and have been widely used to capture bosonic topological order, including chiral spin liquids. Here we extend this approach to \emph{fermionic} topological order by variationally optimizing U(1)U(1)U(1)-symmetric fermionic iPEPS for a fractional Chern insulator (FCI), with bond dimensions up to D=9D=9D=9. We find evidence for a critical bond dimension, above which the ansatz faithfully represents the FCI phase. The FCI state is characterized using bulk observables, including the equal-time single-particle Green's function and the pair-correlation function, as well as the momentum-resolved edge entanglement spectrum. To enable entanglement-spectrum calculations for large iPEPS unit cells, we introduce a compression scheme and show that the low-lying part of the spectrum is already well converged at relatively small cutoff dimensions.
Infinite projected entangled-pair states (iPEPSs) provide a powerful variational framework for two-dimensional quantum matter and have been widely used to capture bosonic topological order, including chiral spin liquids. Here, we extend this approach to fermionic topological order by variationally optimizing U(1)-symmetric fermionic iPEPSs for a fractional Chern insulator (FCI), with bond dimensions up to D=9. We find evidence for a critical bond dimension, above which the ansatz faithfully represents the FCI phase. The FCI state is characterized using bulk observables, including the equal-time single-particle Green's function and the pair-correlation function, as well as the momentum-resolved edge entanglement spectrum. To enable entanglement-spectrum calculations for large iPEPS unit cells, we introduce a compression scheme and show that the low-lying part of the spectrum is already well converged at relatively small cutoff dimensions.
Chiral spin liquids (CSL) based on spin-1/2 fermionic projected entangled pair states (fPEPS) are considered on the square lattice. First, fPEPS approximants of Gutzwiller-projected Chern insulators (GPCI) are investigated by variational Monte Carlo (VMC) techniques on finite-size tori. We show that such fPEPS of finite bond dimension can correctly capture the topological properties of the chiral spin liquid, as the exact GPCI, with the correct topological ground-state degeneracy on the torus. Further, more general fPEPS are considered and optimized (on the infinite plane) to describe the CSL phase of a chiral frustrated Heisenberg antiferromagnet. The chiral modes are computed on the edge of a semi-infinite cylinder (of finite circumference) and shown to follow the predictions from conformal field theory. In contrast to their bosonic analogs the (optimized) fPEPS do not suffer from the replication of the chiral edge mode in the odd topological sector.
We study the parton construction of chiral spin liquids (CSLs) using projected Gaussian fermionic entangled pair states (GfPEPSs). First, we show that GfPEPSs can represent generic spinless Chern insulators faithfully with finite bond dimensions. Then by applying the Gutzwiller projection to a bilayer GfPEPSs, spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ Abelian and non-Abelian CSLs are obtained for Chern number C=1C=1C=1 and 2, respectively. As a consequence of the topological obstruction for GfPEPSs, very weak Gossamer tails are observed in the correlation functions of the fermionic projected entangled pair state (PEPS) Ans\"atze, suggesting that the no-go theorem for chiral PEPS is universal but does not bring any practical limitation. Remarkably, without finetuning, all topological sectors can be constructed showing the expected number of chiral branches in the respective entanglement spectra, providing a sharp improvement with respect to the known bosonic PEPS approach.
Doubts have been raised on the representation of chiral spin liquids exhibiting topological order in terms of projected entangled pair states (PEPSs). Here, starting from a simple spin-1/2 chiral frustrated Heisenberg model, we show that a faithful representation of the chiral spin liquid phase is in fact possible in terms of a generic PEPS upon variational optimization. We find a perfectly chiral gapless edge mode and a rapid decay of correlation functions at short distances consistent with a bulk gap, concomitant with a gossamer long-range tail originating from a PEPS bulk-edge correspondence. For increasing bond dimension, (i) the rapid decrease of spurious features-SU(2) symmetry breaking and long-range tails in correlations-together with (ii) a faster convergence of the ground state energy as compared to state-of-the-art cylinder matrix-product state simulations involving far more variational parameters, prove the fundamental relevance of the PEPS ansatz for simulating systems with chiral topological order.
We study second-order finite-temperature phase transitions of the two-dimensional quantum Ising and interacting honeycomb fermion models using infinite projected entangled pair states (iPEPS). We obtain an iPEPS thermal state representation by variational tensor network renormalization. We find that at the critical temperature Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ the iPEPS correlation length is finite for the computationally accessible values of the iPEPS bond dimension DDD. Motivated by this observation, we investigate the application of finite correlation length scaling (FCLS), which has been previously used for iPEPS simulations of quantum critical points at T=0T=0T=0, to obtain precise values of Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ and the universal critical exponents. We find that in the vicinity of Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ the behavior of observables follows well the one predicted by FCLS. Using FCLS we obtain Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ and the critical exponents in agreement with quantum Monte Carlo results except for couplings close to the quantum critical points where larger bond dimensions are required.
We develop an improved variant of U(1)U(1)U(1)-symmetric infinite projected entangled-pair states (iPEPS) ansatz to investigate the ground-state phase diagram of the spin-1/21/21/2 square ${J}_{1}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{J}_{2}$ Heisenberg model. In order to improve the accuracy of the ansatz, we discuss a simple strategy to select automatically relevant symmetric sectors and also introduce an optimization method to treat second-neighbor interactions more efficiently. We show that variational ground-state energies of the model obtained by the U(1)U(1)U(1)-symmetric iPEPS ansatz (for a fixed bond dimension D)D)D) set a better upper bound, improving previous tensor-network-based results. By studying the finite-DDD scaling of the magnetically order parameter, we find a N\'eel phase for J2/J1<0.53{J}_{2}/{J}_{1}<0.53J2​/J1​<0.53. For 0.53<J2/J1<0.610.53<{J}_{2}/{J}_{1}<0.610.53<J2​/J1​<0.61, a nonmagnetic columnar valence bond solid (VBS) state is established as observed by the pattern of local bond energy. The divergent behavior of correlation length $\ensuremath{\xi}\ensuremath{\sim}{D}^{1.2}$ and vanishing order parameters are consistent with a deconfined N\'eel-to-VBS transition at J2c1/J1=0.530(5){J}_{2}^{{c}_{1}}/{J}_{1}=0.530(5)J2c1​​/J1​=0.530(5), where estimated critical anomalous exponents are ${\ensuremath{\eta}}_{s}\ensuremath{\sim}0.6$ and ${\ensuremath{\eta}}_{d}\ensuremath{\sim}1.9$ for spin and dimer correlations, respectively. We show that the associated VBS order parameter monotonically increases with J2/J1{J}_{2}/{J}_{1}J2​/J1​ and finally a first-order quantum phase transition takes place at J2c2/J1=0.610(2){J}_{2}^{{c}_{2}}/{J}_{1}=0.610(2)J2c2​​/J1​=0.610(2) to the conventional Stripe phase. We compare our results with earlier DMRG and PEPS studies and suggest future directions for resolving remaining issues.