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Anomaly indicators for time-reversal symmetric topological orders

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2017-10-04 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Some time-reversal symmetric topological orders are anomalous in that they cannot be realized in strictly two-dimensions without breaking time reversal symmetry; instead, they can only be realized on the surface of certain three-dimensional systems. We propose two quantities, which we call {\it anomaly indicators}, that can detect if a time-reversal symmetric topological order is anomalous in this sense. Both anomaly indicators are expressed in terms of the quantum dimensions, topological spins, and time-reversal properties of the anyons in the given topological order. The first indicator, η2\eta_2, applies to bosonic systems while the second indicator, ηf\eta_f, applies to fermionic systems in the DIII class. We conjecture that η2\eta_2, together with a previously known indicator η1\eta_1, can detect the two known Z2\mathbb Z_2 anomalies in the bosonic case, while ηf\eta_f can detect the Z16\mathbb Z_{16} anomaly in the fermionic case.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1610.04624,
  title  = {Anomaly indicators for time-reversal symmetric topological orders},
  author = {Chenjie Wang and Michael Levin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.04624},
  year   = {2017}
}

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11 pages