English

Symmetry Protected Topological phases and Generalized Cohomology

High Energy Physics - Theory 2019-11-05 v2 Strongly Correlated Electrons Algebraic Topology

Abstract

We discuss the classification of SPT phases in condensed matter systems. We review Kitaev's argument that SPT phases are classified by a generalized cohomology theory, valued in the spectrum of gapped physical systems. We propose a concrete description of that spectrum and of the corresponding cohomology theory. We compare our proposal to pre-existing constructions in the literature.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1712.07950,
  title  = {Symmetry Protected Topological phases and Generalized Cohomology},
  author = {Davide Gaiotto and Theo Johnson-Freyd},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.07950},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

27 pages, 10 figures. v2: citation update