English

Frustration-free Hamiltonian with Topological Order on Graphs

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2021-04-15 v2 Quantum Physics

Abstract

It is commonly believed that models defined on a closed one-dimensional manifold cannot give rise to topological order. Here we construct frustration-free Hamiltonians which possess both symmetry protected topological order (SPT) on the open chain {\it and} multiple ground state degeneracy (GSD) that is unrelated to global symmetry breaking on the closed chain. Instead of global symmetry breaking, there exists a {\it local} symmetry operator that commutes with the Hamiltonian and connects the multiple ground states, reminiscent of how the topologically distinct ground states of the toric code are connected by various winding operators. Our model solved on an open chain demonstrates symmetry fractionalization as an indication of SPT order and on a general graph the GSD can be shown to scale with the first Betti number - a topological invariant that counts the number of independent cycles or one dimensional holes of the graph.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.04929,
  title  = {Frustration-free Hamiltonian with Topological Order on Graphs},
  author = {Pramod Padmanabhan and Jintae Kim and Jung Hoon Han},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.04929},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

The paper was written in a manner making it prone to misinterpretation. These models are inspired by higher gauge theories as elaborated in 1907.01608v2 making them similar to the toric code. The ground states have topological entanglement entropy which is accounted for by anyonic excitations. A more comprehensive version will appear in a fresh submission by one of the authors, PP

R2 v1 2026-06-23T20:50:20.560Z