Sixteen-Fold Way for Fermionic Topological Orders
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 one-form symmetry, generated in each theory by a single nontrivial 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 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 one-form symmetry, which acquires a 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