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Sixteen-Fold Way for Fermionic Topological Orders

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2026-06-27 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory Mathematical Physics Quantum Physics

Abstract

Fermionic topological orders can host 't Hooft anomalies with no bosonic counterpart. We identify a new sixteen-fold family of (2+1)D fermionic topological orders, forming a fermionic analogue of Kitaev's sixteen-fold way. This family is distinguished by the mod 16 't Hooft anomaly of a Z2\mathbb{Z}_2 one-form symmetry, generated in each theory by a single nontrivial Z2\mathbb{Z}_2 anyon. This intrinsically fermionic anomaly permits anyon spins that are forbidden in bosonic phases; the simplest new example is an Abelian fermionic topological order containing a single Z2\mathbb{Z}_2 Abelian anyon of spin 1/8. Each theory can be realized as the gapped boundary of a (3+1)D fermionic symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase protected by the Z2\mathbb{Z}_2 one-form symmetry, which acquires a Z16\mathbb{Z}_{16} classification once the spacetime spin structure is twisted by the one-form symmetry. We realize these phases microscopically via lattice models built from Walker-Wang models coupled to local fermions.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2606.28682,
  title  = {Sixteen-Fold Way for Fermionic Topological Orders},
  author = {Ryohei Kobayashi and Abhinav Prem and Matthew Yu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.28682},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

15 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-22T20:14:55.352Z