English

Edge states for the Kalmeyer-Laughlin wave function

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2016-01-28 v4 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Quantum Physics

Abstract

We study lattice wave functions obtained from the SU(2)1_1 Wess-Zumino-Witten conformal field theory. Following Moore and Read's construction, the Kalmeyer-Laughlin fractional quantum Hall state is defined as a correlation function of primary fields. By an additional insertion of Kac-Moody currents, we associate a wave function to each state of the conformal field theory. These wave functions span the complete Hilbert space of the lattice system. On the cylinder, we study global properties of the lattice states analytically and correlation functions numerically using a Metropolis Monte Carlo method. By comparing short-range bulk correlations, numerical evidence is provided that the states with one current operator represent edge states in the thermodynamic limit. We show that the edge states with one Kac-Moody current of lowest order have a good overlap with low-energy excited states of a local Hamiltonian, for which the Kalmeyer-Laughlin state approximates the ground state. For some states, exact parent Hamiltonians are derived on the cylinder. These Hamiltonians are SU(2) invariant and nonlocal with up to four-body interactions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1509.02147,
  title  = {Edge states for the Kalmeyer-Laughlin wave function},
  author = {Benedikt Herwerth and Germán Sierra and Hong-Hao Tu and J. Ignacio Cirac and Anne E. B. Nielsen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1509.02147},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

17 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables; v4: error bars and fig. 6 corrected + minor corrections

R2 v1 2026-06-22T10:51:06.132Z