This review is an expansion of my talk at the conference on Sixty Years of Yang–Mills Theory. I review and explain the line of thoughts that lead to a recent joint work with Hu and Geer [Hu et al., arXiv:1502.03433] on the construction, exact solutions and ubiquitous properties of a class of quantum group gauge models on a honey-comb lattice. Conceptually the construction achieves a synthesis of the ideas of Yang–Baxter equations with those of Yang–Mills theory. Physically the models describe topological anyonic states in 2D systems.
Abstract Starting from a quantum dilogarithm over a Pontryagin self-dual LCA group A , we construct an operator solution of the Yang–Baxter equation generalizing the solution of the Faddeev–Volkov model. Based on a specific choice of a subgroup and by using the Weil transformation, we also give a new non-operator interpretation of the Yang–Baxter relation. That allows us to construct a lattice QFT-model of IRF-type with gauge invariance under independent B -translations of local ‘spin’ variables.
We study the quantum group symmetry of the \({\bb Z}_{N}\) symmetric lattice field theory, which is viewed as a discretization of the sℓ(N) affine Toda field theory. We reveal the quantum group structure, and construct explicitly the quantum local integrals of motion by use of the quantum dilogarithm function.