English

Anomaly indicators for topological orders with $U(1)$ and time-reversal symmetry

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2024-06-21 v3 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We study anomalies in time-reversal (Z2T\mathbb{Z}_2^T) and U(1)U(1) symmetric topological orders. In this context, an anomalous topological order is one that cannot be realized in a strictly (2+1)(2+1)-D system but can be realized on the surface of a (3+1)(3+1)-D symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase. To detect these anomalies we propose several anomaly indicators -- functions that take as input the algebraic data of a symmetric topological order and that output a number indicating the presence or absence of an anomaly. We construct such indicators for both structures of the full symmetry group, i.e. U(1)Z2TU(1)\rtimes\mathbb{Z}_2^T and U(1)×Z2TU(1)\times\mathbb{Z}_2^T, and for both bosonic and fermionic topological orders. In all cases we conjecture that our indicators are complete in the sense that the anomalies they detect are in one-to-one correspondence with the known classification of (3+1)(3+1)-D SPT phases with the same symmetry. We also show that one of our indicators for bosonic topological orders has a mathematical interpretation as a partition function for the bulk (3+1)(3+1)-D SPT phase on a particular manifold and in the presence of a particular background gauge field for the U(1)U(1) symmetry.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1905.00435,
  title  = {Anomaly indicators for topological orders with $U(1)$ and time-reversal symmetry},
  author = {Matthew F. Lapa and Michael Levin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.00435},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

v2: 21 pages, 2 figures, minor changes from the first version. Version published in PRB. v3: corrected a minor error in the proof that $\eta_{\text{ETI}} = 1$ for Abelian topological orders