English

Lieb-Robinson bounds and the speed of light from topological order

Quantum Physics 2009-01-14 v2 Strongly Correlated Electrons General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Lattice

Abstract

We apply the Lieb-Robinson bounds technique to find the maximum speed of interaction in a spin model with topological order whose low-energy effective theory describes light [see X.-G. Wen, \prb {\bf 68}, 115413 (2003)]. The maximum speed of interactions is found in two dimensions is bounded from above less than 2e\sqrt{2} e times the speed of emerging light, giving a strong indication that light is indeed the maximum speed of interactions. This result does not rely on mean field theoretic methods. In higher spatial dimensions, the Lieb-Robinson speed is conjectured to increase linearly with the dimension itself. Implications for the horizon problem in cosmology are discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0808.2495,
  title  = {Lieb-Robinson bounds and the speed of light from topological order},
  author = {Alioscia Hamma and Fotini Markopoulou and Isabeau Premont-Schwarz and Simone Severini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0808.2495},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 1 eps figure. Bound improved