English

Discrete spin structures and commuting projector models for 2d fermionic symmetry protected topological phases

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2016-09-14 v2 Mathematical Physics math.MP Quantum Physics

Abstract

We construct exactly solved commuting projector Hamiltonian lattice models for all known 2+1d fermionic symmetry protected topological phases (SPTs) with on-site unitary symmetry group Gf=G×Z2fG_f = G \times \mathbb{Z}_2^f, where GG is finite and Z2f\mathbb{Z}_2^f is the fermion parity symmetry. In particular, our models transcend the class of group supercohomology models, which realize some, but not all, fermionic SPTs in 2+1d. A natural ingredient in our construction is a discrete form of the spin structure of the 2d spatial surface MM on which our model is defined, namely a `Kasteleyn' orientation of a certain graph associated with the lattice. As a special case, our construction yields commuting projector models for all 88 members of the Z8\mathbb{Z}_8 classification of 2d fermionic SPTs with G=Z2G = \mathbb{Z}_2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1604.02145,
  title  = {Discrete spin structures and commuting projector models for 2d fermionic symmetry protected topological phases},
  author = {Nicolas Tarantino and Lukasz Fidkowski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1604.02145},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

13 pages, 12 figures. V2: Corrected typos and added citations

R2 v1 2026-06-22T13:27:43.976Z