English

Anyons are not energy eigenspaces of quantum double Hamiltonians

Quantum Physics 2017-12-06 v2 Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

Kitaev's quantum double models, including the toric code, are canonical examples of quantum topological models on a 2D spin lattice. Their Hamiltonian defines the groundspace by imposing an energy penalty to any nontrivial flux or charge, but does not distinguish among those. We generalize this construction by introducing a novel family of Hamiltonians made of commuting four-body projectors that provide an intricate splitting of the Hilbert space by discriminating among non-trivial charges and fluxes. Our construction highlights that anyons are not in one-to-one correspondence with energy eigenspaces, a feature already present in Kitaev's construction. This discrepancy is due to the presence of local degrees of freedom in addition to topological ones on a lattice.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1701.04456,
  title  = {Anyons are not energy eigenspaces of quantum double Hamiltonians},
  author = {Anna Komar and Olivier Landon-Cardinal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.04456},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

18 pages, 8 figures. Added Sec.V and Fig. 7 to clarify "charge flavors"; modififed title