Quasiparticle statistics from the ground state wave function

M. Ya. Azbel

Yi Zhang, Tarun Grover, Ari M. Turner +2 more

Topologically ordered phases are gapped states, defined by the properties of excitations when taken around one another. Here we demonstrate a method to extract the statistics and braiding of excitations, given just the set of ground-state wave functions on a torus. This is achieved by studying the topological entanglement entropy (TEE) upon partitioning the torus into two cylinders. In this setting, general considerations dictate that the TEE generally differs from that in trivial partitions and depends on the chosen ground state. Central to our scheme is the identification of ground states with minimum entanglement entropy, which reflect the quasiparticle excitations of the topological phase. The transformation of these states allows for the determination of the modular $\mathcal{S}$ and $\mathcal{U}$ matrices which encode quasiparticle properties. We demonstrate our method by extracting the modular $\mathcal{S}$ matrix of a chiral spin liquid phase using a Monte Carlo scheme to calculate the TEE and prove that the quasiparticles obey semionic statistics. This method offers a route to nearly complete determination of the topological order in certain cases.

Filiberto Ares, Kumar S. Gupta, Amilcar R. de Queiroz

We show that the N-particle Sutherland model with inverse-square and harmonic interactions exhibits orthogonality catastrophe. For a fixed value of the harmonic coupling, the overlap of the N-body ground state wave functions with two different values of the inverse-square interaction term goes to zero in the thermodynamic limit. When the two values of the inverse-square coupling differ by an infinitesimal amount, the wave function overlap shows an exponential suppression. This is qualitatively different from the usual power law suppression observed in the Anderson's orthogonality catastrophe. We also obtain an analytic expression for the wave function overlaps for an arbitrary set of couplings, whose properties are analyzed numerically. The quasiparticles constituting the ground state wave functions of the Sutherland model are known to obey fractional exclusion statistics. Our analysis indicates that the orthogonality catastrophe may be valid in systems with more general kinds of statistics than just the fermionic type.

J. W. Halleý

Kjall, J., Eddy Ardonne, Dwivedi, V. +2 more

Matrix product state techniques provide a very efficient way to numerically evaluate certain classes of quantum Hall wave functions that can be written as correlators in two-dimensional conformal field theories. Important examples are the Laughlin and Moore-Read ground states and their quasihole excitations. In this paper, we extend the matrix product state techniques to evaluate quasielectron wave functions, a more complex task because the corresponding conformal field theory operator is not local. We use our method to obtain density profiles for states with multiple quasielectrons and quasiholes, and to calculate the (mutual) statistical phases of the excitations with high precision. The wave functions we study are subject to a known difficulty: the position of a quasielectron depends on the presence of other quasiparticles, even when their separation is large compared to the magnetic length. Quasielectron wave functions constructed using the composite fermion picture, which are topologically equivalent to the quasielectrons we study, have the same problem. This flaw is serious in that it gives wrong results for the statistical phases obtained by braiding distant quasiparticles. We analyze this problem in detail and show that it originates from an incomplete screening of the topological charges, which invalidates the plasma analogy. We demonstrate that this can be remedied in the case when the separation between the quasiparticles is large, which allows us to obtain the correct statistical phases. Finally, we propose that a modification of the Laughlin state, that allows for local quasielectron operators, should have good topological properties for arbitrary configurations of excitations.

J. Ruvalds