We apply methods of equivariant homotopy theory, which may not previously have found due attention in condensed matter physics, to classify first the fragile/unstable topological phases of 2D crystalline Chern insulator materials, and second the possible topological order of their fractional cousins. We highlight that the phases are given by the equivariant 2-Cohomotopy of the Brillouin torus of crystal momenta (with respect to wallpaper point group actions) -- which, despite the attention devoted to crystalline Chern insulators, seems not to have been considered before. Arguing then that any topological order must be reflected in the adiabatic monodromy of gapped quantum ground states over the covariantized space of these band topologies, we compute the latter in examples where this group is non-abelian, showing that any potential FQAH anyons must be localized in momentum space. We close with an outlook on the relevance for the search for topological quantum computing hardware. Mathematical details are spelled out in a supplement.
We classify the irreducible anyon sectors of Levin-Wen models over an arbitrary unitary fusion category
C, showing that they are in one-to-one correspondence with equivalence classes of simple objects of the Drinfeld center
Z(C). We achieve this by making explicit how the Levin-Wen Hamiltonian stabilizes subspaces isomorphic to state spaces of the corresponding Turaev-Viro TQFT, and developing a detailed understanding of these state spaces on punctured disks. In particular, we construct Drinfeld insertion operators on such spaces which can move anyons between the punctures, and can change their fusion channels. Using these Drinfeld insertions, we construct explicit string operators that excite anyons above the ground state. The fusion and braiding properties of these anyons will be analysed in a companion paper.
Electronic bands in crystals are described by an ensemble of Bloch wave functions indexed by momenta defined in the first Brillouin Zone, and their associated energies. In an insulator, an energy gap around the chemical potential separates valence bands from conduction bands. The ensemble of valence bands is then a well defined object, which can possess non-trivial or twisted topological properties. In the case of a twisted topology, the insulator is called a topological insulator. We introduce this notion of topological order in insulators as an obstruction to define the Bloch wave functions over the whole Brillouin Zone using a single phase convention. Several simple historical models displaying a topological order in dimension two are considered. Various expressions of the corresponding topological index are finally discussed.
We consider two-dimensional (2d) quantum many-body systems with long-range orders, where the only gapless excitations in the spectrum are Goldstone modes of spontaneously broken continuous symmetries. To understand the interplay between classical long-range order of local order parameters and quantum order of long-range entanglement in the ground states, we study the topological point defects and textures of order parameters in such systems. We show that the universal properties of point defects and textures are determined by the remnant symmetry enriched topological order in the symmetry-breaking ground states with a nonfluctuating order parameter, and provide a classification for their properties based on the inflation-restriction exact sequence. We highlight a few phenomena revealed by our theory framework. First, in the absence of intrinsic topological orders, we show a connection between the symmetry properties of point defects and textures to deconfined quantum criticality. Second, when the symmetry-breaking ground state has intrinsic topological orders, we show that the point defects can permute different anyons when braided around. They can also obey projective fusion rules in the sense that multiple vortices can fuse into an Abelian anyon, a phenomenon for which we coin ``defect fractionalization.'' Finally, we provide a formula to compute the fractional statistics and fractional quantum numbers carried by textures (skyrmions) in Abelian topological orders.
Two-band 2D fractional Chern insulators (FCIs) have recently been shown, in principle, to admit unusual anyonic order, associated with Bloch Hopfions localized in momentum space. Here we show that bounding the integrated quantum metric along one primitive Brillouin-zone cycle may refine this topological order to
∣C∣ distinct braiding observables, cyclically permuted by lattice translations, for Chern numbers
∣C∣>1. The cyclic structure entails mildly non-abelian braiding phases and otherwise matches the spectral flow exhibited by the FCI's hybrid Wannier states, with the metric bound equivalently a bound on the states' real-space spread.
We give a classification of quantum gates in principle implementable on this topological order; among them we find the non-Clifford T-gate and the non-Clifford entangling CCZ-gate. This points to novel pathways to fault-tolerant quantum processes within the known orbital structure of FCIs, potentially informing experimental searches towards hardware for future topological quantum computers.
We classify distinct types of quantum number fractionalization occurring in two-dimensional topologically ordered phases, focusing in particular on phases with
Z2 topological order, that is, on gapped
Z2 spin liquids. We find that the fractionalization class of each anyon is an equivalence class of projective representations of the symmetry group, corresponding to elements of the cohomology group
H2(G,Z2). This result leads us to a symmetry classification of gapped
Z2 spin liquids, such that two phases in different symmetry classes cannot be connected without breaking symmetry or crossing a phase transition. Symmetry classes are defined by specifying a fractionalization class for each type of anyon. The fusion rules of anyons play a crucial role in determining the symmetry classes. For translation and internal symmetries, braiding statistics plays no role, but can affect the classification when point group symmetries are present. For square lattice space group, time-reversal, and
SO(3) spin rotation symmetries, we find $2\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}098\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}176\ensuremath{\approx}{2}^{21}$ distinct symmetry classes. Our symmetry classification is not complete, as we exclude, by assumption, permutation of the different types of anyons by symmetry operations. We give an explicit construction of symmetry classes for square lattice space group symmetry in the toric code model. Via simple examples, we illustrate how information about fractionalization classes can, in principle, be obtained from the spectrum and quantum numbers of excited states. Moreover, the symmetry class can be partially determined from the quantum numbers of the four degenerate ground states on the torus. We also extend our results to arbitrary Abelian topological orders (limited, though, to translations and internal symmetries), and compare our classification with the related projective symmetry group classification of parton mean-field theories. Our results provide a framework for understanding and probing the sharp distinctions among symmetric
Z2 spin liquids and are a first step toward a full classification of symmetric topologically ordered phases.