Among the quantum many-body models that host anyon excitation and topological orders, quantum dimer models (QDM) provide a unique playground for studying the relation between single-anyon and multi-anyon continuum spectra. However, as the prototypical correlated system with local constraints, the generic solution of QDM at different lattice geometry and parameter regimes is still missing due to the lack of controlled methodologies. Here we obtain, via the newly developed sweeping cluster quantum Monte Carlo algorithm, the excitation spectra in different phases of the triangular lattice QDM. Our results reveal the single vison excitations inside the $Z_2$ quantum spin liquid (QSL) and its condensation towards the $\sqrt{12}\times\sqrt{12}$ valence bond solid (VBS), and demonstrate the translational symmetry fractionalization and emergent O(4) symmetry at the QSL-VBS transition. We find the single vison excitations, whose convolution qualitatively reproduces the dimer spectra, are not free but subject to interaction effects throughout the transition. The nature of the VBS with its O(4) order parameters are unearthed in full scope. Our approach opens the avenue for generic solution of the static and dynamic properties of QDMs and has relevance towards the realization and detection of fractional excitations in programmable quantum simulators.
Indistinguishable particles in two dimensions can be characterized by anyonic quantum statistics more general than those of bosons or fermions. Such anyons emerge as quasiparticles in fractional quantum Hall states and certain frustrated quantum magnets. Quantum liquids of anyons exhibit degenerate ground states where the degeneracy depends on the topology of the underlying surface. Here we present a novel type of continuous quantum phase transition in such anyonic quantum liquids that is driven by quantum fluctuations of topology. The critical state connecting two anyonic liquids on surfaces …
Thermodynamic properties of chiral spin liquids are investigated for a variant of the Kitaev model defined on a decorated honeycomb lattice. Using the quantum Monte Carlo simulation, we find that the model exhibits a finite-temperature phase transition associated with the time reversal symmetry breaking, in both topologically trivial and nontrivial regions. While changing the exchange constants, the phase transition changes from continuous to discontinuous one, apparently correlated with the change in the excitations from Abelian to non-Abelian anyons. We show this coincidence by computing the…
We construct a lattice model of topological order (kagome quantum spin liquids) and solve it with unbiased quantum Monte Carlo simulations. A three-stage anyon condensation with two transitions from a $\mathbb Z_2\boxtimes\mathbb Z_2$ topological order to a $\mathbb Z_2$ topological order and eventually to a trivial symmetric phase is revealed. These results provide concrete examples of phase transitions between topological orders in quantum magnets. The designed quantum spin liquid model and its numerical solution offer a playground for further investigations on vestigial anyon condensation.
A set of localized, non-Abelian anyons - such as vortices in a p_x + i p_y superconductor or quasiholes in certain quantum Hall states - gives rise to a macroscopic degeneracy. Such a degeneracy is split in the presence of interactions between the anyons. Here we show that in two spatial dimensions this splitting selects a unique collective state as ground state of the interacting many-body system. This collective state can be a novel gapped quantum liquid nucleated inside the original parent liquid (of which the anyons are excitations). This physics is of relevance for any quantum Hall platea…
Motivated by recent experiments on the Kitaev honeycomb magnet $α\text{-RuCl}_3$, we introduce time-domain probes of the edge and quasiparticle content of non-Abelian spin liquids. Our scheme exploits ancillary quantum spins that communicate via time-dependent tunneling of energy into and out of the spin liquid's chiral Majorana edge state. We show that the ancillary-spin dynamics reveals the edge-state velocity and, in suitable geometries, detects individual non-Abelian anyons and emergent fermions via a time-domain counterpart of quantum-Hall anyon interferometry. We anticipate applications …
Topological phases in (2+1)-dimensions are frequently equipped with global symmetries, like conjugation, bilayer or electric-magnetic duality, that relabel anyons without affecting the topological structures. Twist defects are static point-like objects that permute the labels of orbiting anyons. Gauging these symmetries by quantizing defects into dynamical excitations leads to a wide class of more exotic topological phases referred as twist liquids, which are generically non-Abelian. We formulate a general gauging framework, characterize the anyon structure of twist liquids and provide solvabl…
Relativistic Mott insulators known as 'Kitaev materials' potentially realize spin liquids hosting non-Abelian anyons. Motivated by fault-tolerant quantum-computing applications in this setting, we introduce a dynamical anyon-generation protocol that exploits universal edge physics. The setup features holes in the spin liquid, which define energetically cheap locations for non-Abelian anyons, connected by a narrow bridge that can be tuned between spin liquid and topologically trivial phases. We show that modulating the bridge from trivial to spin liquid over intermediate time scales -- quantifi…
We show that spin-spin correlations in a non-Abelian Kitaev spin liquid are associated with a characteristic inhomogeneous charge density distribution in the vicinity of $\mathbb{Z}_2$ vortices. This density profile and the corresponding local electric fields are observable, e.g., by means of surface probe techniques. Conversely, by applying bias voltages to several probe tips, one can stabilize Ising anyons ($\mathbb{Z}_2$ vortices harboring a Majorana zero mode) at designated positions, where we predict a clear Majorana signature in energy absorption spectroscopy.
Most Heisenberg-like spin chains flow to a universal free-fermion fixed point near the magnetic-field induced saturation point. Here we show that an exotic fixed point, characterized by two species of low-energy excitations with mutual anyonic statistics, may also emerge in such spin chains if the dispersion relation has two minima. By using bosonization, two-magnon exact calculations, and numerical density-matrix-renormalization-group, we demonstrate the existence of this anyonic-liquid fixed point in an XXZ spin chain with up to second neighbor interactions. We also identify a range of micro…
Fractionalized anyons in counterflowing Quantum Hall Liquids
Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交大李政道研究所）；Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova University Center（斯德哥尔摩大学阿尔巴诺瓦大学中心物理系）；Department of Physics, KTH-Royal Institute of Technology（瑞典皇家理工学院物理系）；Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability, Department of Physics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology（瑞典皇家理工学院物理系瓦伦堡可持续材料科学倡议）
Topological phases in two dimensions support anyonic quasiparticle excitations that obey neither bosonic nor fermionic statistics. These anyon structures often carry global symmetries that relate distinct anyons with similar fusion and statistical properties. Anyonic symmetries associate topological defects or fluxes in topological phases. As the symmetries are global and static, these extrinsic defects are semiclassical objects that behave disparately from conventional quantum anyons. Remarkably, even when the topological states supporting them are Abelian, they are generically non-Abelian an…
Aharonov-Bohm interferometry is the most direct probe of anyonic statistics in the quantum Hall effect. The technique involves oscillations of the electric current as a function of the magnetic field and is not applicable to Kitaev spin liquids and other systems without charged quasiparticles. Here, we establish a novel protocol, involving heat transport, for revealing fractional statistics even in the absence of charged excitations, as is the case in quantum spin liquids. Specifically, we demonstrate that heat transport in Kitaev spin liquids through two distinct interferometer geometries, Fa…
Boundary conformal field theory is brought to bear on the study of topological insulating phases of non-abelian anyonic chains. These topologically non-trivial phases display protected anyonic end modes. We consider antiferromagnetically coupled spin-1/2 su(2)$_k$ chains at any level $k$, focusing on the most prominent examples; the case $k = 2$ describes Ising anyons (equivalent to Majorana fermions) and $k = 3$ corresponds to Fibonacci anyons. We prove that the braiding of these emergent anyons exhibits the same braiding behavior as the physical quasiparticles. These results suggest a `solid…
Fibonacci anyon, an exotic quasi-particle excitation, plays a pivotal role in realization of a quantum computer. Starting from a $SU(2)_4$ topological phase, in this paper we demonstrate a way to construct a Fibonacci topological phase which has only one non-trivial excitation described by the Fibonacci anyon. We show that arrays of anyonic chains created by excitations of the $SU(2)_4$ phase leads to the Fibonacci phase. We further demonstrate that our theoretical propositions can be extended to other topological phases.
We theoretically investigate topological properties of the one-dimensional superlattice anyon-Hubbard model, which can be mapped to a superlattice bose-Hubbard model with an occupation-dependent phase factor by fractional Jordan-Wigner transformation. The topological anyon-Mott insulator is identified by topological invariant and edge modes using exact diagonalization and density-matrix renormalization-group algorithm. When only the statistical angle is varied and all other parameters are fixed, a statistically induced topological phase transition can be realized, which provides new insights i…
We demonstrate how the generalized Pauli exclusion principle emerges for quasiparticle excitations in 2d topological phases. As an example, we examine the Levin-Wen model with the Fibonacci data (specified in the text), and construct the number operator for fluxons living on plaquettes. By numerically counting the many-body states with fluxon number fixed, the matrix of exclusion statistics parameters is identified and is shown to depend on the spatial topology (sphere or torus) of the system. Our work reveals the structure of the (many-body) Hilbert space and some general features of thermody…
Quantum mechanical systems, whose degrees of freedom are so-called su(2)_k anyons, form a bridge between ordinary SU(2) spin systems and systems of interacting non-Abelian anyons. Such a connection can be made for arbitrary spin-S systems, and we explicitly discuss spin-1/2 and spin-1 systems. Anyonic spin-1/2 chains exhibit a topological protection mechanism that stabilizes their gapless ground states and which vanishes only in the limit (k to infinity) of the ordinary spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain. For anyonic spin-1 chains we find their phase diagrams to closely mirror the one of the biquadrati…
We demonstrate that the anyon statistics and three-loop statistics of various 2d and 3d topological phases can be derived using semiclassical nonlinear Sigma model field theories with a topological $Θ$-term. In our formalism, the braiding statistics has a natural geometric meaning: The braiding process of anyons or loops leads to a nontrivial field configuration in the space-time, which will contribute a braiding phase factor due to the $Θ$-term.
We investigate how the Kitaev spin liquid state described by Majorana fermions coupled with $Z_2$ gauge fields is affected by non-Kitaev interactions which exist in real candidate materials of the Kitaev magnet. It is found that the off-diagonal exchange interaction referred to as the $Γ'$ term dramatically changes the Majorana band structure in the case of the antiferromagnetic Kitaev interaction, and gives rise to a topological phase transition from a non-Abelian topological phase with the Chern number equal to $\pm 1$ to an Abelian phase with the Chern number equal to $\pm 2$, in which the …
Recent theoretical studies inspired by experiments on the Kitaev magnet $α$-RuCl$_3$ highlight the nontrivial impact of phonons on the thermal Hall conductivity of chiral topological phases. Here we introduce mixed mesoscopic-macroscopic devices that allow refined thermal-transport probes of non-Abelian spin liquids with Ising topological order. These devices feature a quantum-coherent mesoscopic region with negligible phonon conductance, flanked by macroscopic lobes that facilitate efficient thermalization between chiral Majorana edge modes and bulk phonons. We show that our devices enable $(…
We propose a novel parameter, the anyonic topological entropy, designed to detect the error correcting phase of a topological memory. Unlike similar quantities such as the topological entropy, the anyonic topological entropy is defined using the states of the anyon occupations. As such, though the parameter deals with phases and phase transitions that are quantum in nature, it can be calculated solely from classical probability distributions. In many cases, these calculations will be tractable using efficient classical algorithms. The parameter therefore provides a new avenue for efficient stu…
The elementary excitations of a fractional quantum Hall liquid are quasiparticles or quasiholes which are neither bosons nor fermions, but so-called anyons. Here we study impurity particles immersed in a quantum Hall liquid which bind to the quasiholes via repulsive interactions with the liquid. We show that the angular momentum of an impurity is given by the multiple of a fractional "quantum" of angular momentum, and can directly be observed from the impurity density. In a system with several impurities bound to quasiholes, their total angular momentum interpolates between the values for free…
Statistical Mechanics and Symmetries of Non-Abelian Anyon Proliferation: From Deformation to Decoherence
California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；Ghent university（根特大学）；Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago（芝加哥大学普里茨克分子工程学院）；University of California, Berkeley（加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校）
We examine tunneling of topological charge between non-Abelian anyons as a perturbation of the long-range effective theory of a topologically ordered system. We obtain energy corrections in terms of the anyons' universal algebraic structure and non-universal tunneling amplitudes. We find that generic tunneling completely lifts the topological degeneracy of non-Abelian anyons. This degeneracy splitting is exponentially suppressed for long distances between anyons, but leaves no topological protection at shorter distances. We also show that general interactions of anyons can be expressed in term…
We study one dimensional wires with spin-orbit coupling. We show that in the presence of Zeeman field and strong electron-electron interaction a clean wire may form fractional helical liquid states with phenomenology similar to fractional quantum Hall liquids. Most notably, the wire's two terminal conductance is predicted to show fractional quantized conductance plateaus at low electron density. When the system is proximity-coupled to a superconductor, fractional Majorana bound states may be stabilized. We discuss how disorder destabilizes these fractional phases. Possible experimental realiza…
We study the properties of entanglement in two-dimensional topologically ordered phases of matter. Such phases support anyons, quasiparticles with exotic exchange statistics. The emergent nonlocal state spaces of anyonic systems admit a particular form of entanglement that does not exist in conventional quantum mechanical systems. We study this entanglement by adapting standard notions of entropy to anyonic systems. We use the algebraic theory of anyon models (modular tensor categories) to illustrate the nonlocal entanglement structure of anyonic systems. Using this formalism, we present a gen…
It is well-known that many topological phase transitions of intrinsic Abelian topological phases are accompanied by condensation and confinement of anyons. However, for non-Abelian topological phases, more intricate phenomena can occur at their phase transitions, because the multiple degenerate degrees of freedom of a non-Abelian anyon can change in different ways after phase transitions. In this paper, we study these new phenomena, including partial condensation, partial deconfinement and especially anyon splitting (a non-Abelian anyon splits into different kinds of the new anyon species) usi…
We study symmetries and defects of a wide class of two dimensional Abelian topological phases characterized by Lie algebras. We formulate the symmetry group of all Abelian topological field theories. The symmetries relabel quasiparticles (or anyons) but leave exchange and braiding statistics unchanged. Within the class of $ADE$ phases in particular, these anyonic symmetries have a natural origin from the Lie algebra. We classify one dimensional gapped phases along the interface between identical topological states according to symmetries. This classification also applies to gapped edges of a w…
Anyon models can be symmetric under some permutations of their topological charges. One can then conceive topological defects that, under monodromy, transform anyons according to a symmetry. We study the realization of such defects in the toric code model, showing that a process where defects are braided and fused has the same outcome as if they were Ising anyons. These ideas can also be applied in the context of topological codes.
We review the general strategy of topologically protected quantum information processing based on non-Abelian anyons, in which quantum information is encoded into the fusion channels of pairs of anyons and in fusion paths for multi-anyon states, realized in two-dimensional fractional quantum Hall systems. The quantum gates which are needed for the quantum information processing in these multi-qubit registers are implemented by exchange or braiding of the non-Abelian anyons that are at fixed positions in two-dimensional coordinate space. As an example we consider the Pfaffian topological quantu…
Topological phases in frustrated quantum spin systems have fascinated researchers for decades. One of the earliest proposals for such a phase was the chiral spin liquid put forward by Kalmeyer and Laughlin in 1987 as the bosonic analogue of the fractional quantum Hall effect. Elusive for many years, recent times have finally seen a number of models that realize this phase. However, these models are somewhat artificial and unlikely to be found in realistic materials. Here, we take an important step towards the goal of finding a chiral spin liquid in nature by examining a physically motivated mo…
We study a microscopic model of interacting fermions in a ladder setup, where the total number of particles is conserved. At a special point, the ground state is known and gives rise to a topological state of matter with edge modes obeying the statistics of Ising anyons. Using a combination of bosonization as well as full scale numerical density-matrix renormalization group analysis, we map out the full phase diagram. We nd that the topological phase survives in an extended parameter regime. Remarkably, an additional symmetry is required to protect the topological phase.
The anyonic excitations of topological two-body color code model are used to implement a set of gates. Because of two-body interactions, the model can be simulated in optical lattices. The excitations have nontrivial mutual statistics, and are coupled to nontrivial gauge fields. The underlying lattice structure provides various opportunities for encoding the states of a logical qubit in anyonic states. The interactions make the transition between different anyonic states, so being logical operation in the computational bases of the encoded qubit. Two-qubit gates can be performed in a topologic…
Topological quantum computation is an implementation of a quantum computer in a way that radically reduces decoherence. Topological qubits are encoded in the topological evolution of two-dimensional quasi-particles called anyons and universal set of quantum gates can be constructed by braiding these anyons yielding to a topologically protected circuit model. In the present study we remind the basics of this emerging quantum computation scheme and illustrate how a topological qubit built with three Fibonacci anyons might be adopted to achieve leakage free braiding gate by exchanging the anyons …
There are many interesting parallels between systems of interacting non-Abelian anyons and quantum magnetism, occuring in ordinary SU(2) quantum magnets. Here we consider theories of so-called su(2)_k anyons, well-known deformations of SU(2), in which only the first k+1 angular momenta of SU(2) occur. In this manuscript, we discuss in particular anyonic generalizations of ordinary SU(2) spin chains with an emphasis on anyonic spin S=1 chains. We find that the overall phase diagrams for these anyonic spin-1 chains closely mirror the phase diagram of the ordinary bilinear-biquadratic spin-1 chai…
We use Projected Entangled Pair States (PEPS) to study topological quantum phase transitions. The local description of topological order in the PEPS formalism allows us to set up order parameters which measure condensation and deconfinement of anyons, and serve as a substitute for conventional order parameters. We apply these order parameters, together with anyon-anyon correlation functions and some further probes, to characterize topological phases and phase transitions within a family of models based on a $\mathbb Z_4$ symmetry, which contains $\mathbb Z_4$ quantum double, toric code, double…
Superconductivity and non-Fermi liquid metals in a charge-1/3 anyon fluid
Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stanford University（斯坦福大学莱因韦伯理论物理研究所）；Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院物理系）
Elementary excitations in highly entangled states such as quantum spin liquids may exhibit exotic statistics, different from those obeyed by fundamental bosons and fermions. Excitations called non-Abelian anyons are predicted to exist in a Kitaev spin liquid - the ground state of an exactly solvable model proposed by Kitaev almost a decade ago. A smoking-gun signature of such non-Abelian anyons, namely a half-integer quantized thermal Hall conductivity, was recently reported in $α$-RuCl$_3$. While fascinating, a microscopic theory for this phenomenon in $α$-RuCl$_3$ remains elusive because the…
In a Laughlin fractional quantum Hall state, one- and two-quasihole states can be obtained by diagonalizing the many-body Hamiltonian with a trapping potential or, for larger systems, from the linear combination of the edge Jack polynomials. The quasihole states live entirely in the subspace of the lowest-energy branch in the energy spectrum with a fixed number of orbits, or a hard-wall confinement. The reduction in the Hilbert space dimension facilitates the study of time evolution of the quasihole states after, say, the removal of the trapping potential. We explore the quench dynamics under …
We study the entanglement spectrum of topological systems hosting non-Abelian anyons. Akin to energy levels of a Hamiltonian, the entanglement spectrum is composed of symmetry multiplets. We find that the ratio between different eigenvalues within one multiplet is universal and is determined by the anyonic quantum dimensions. This result is a consequence of the conservation of the total topological charge. For systems with non-Abelian topological order, this generalizes known degeneracies of the entanglement spectrum, which are hallmarks of topological states. Experimental detection of these e…
Anyon collision experiments have recently demonstrated the ability to discriminate between fermionic and anyonic statistics. However, only one type of anyons associated with the simple Laughlin state at filling factor $ν=1/3$ has been probed so far. It is now important to establish anyon collisions as quantitative probes of fractional statistics for more complex topological orders, with the ability to distinguish between different species of anyons with different statistics. In this work, we use the anyon collider to compare the Laughlin $ν=1/3$ state, which is used as the reference state, wit…
We study in detail the properties of pi-fluxes embedded in a state with a finite density of anyons that form either a Fermi liquid or a Bose-Einstein condensate. By employing a recently developed exact lattice bosonization in 2D, we demonstrate that such pi-flux remains a fully deconfined quasiparticle with a finite energy cost in a Fermi liquid of emergent fermions coupled to a Z2 gauge field. This pi-flux is accompanied by a screening cloud of fermions, which in the case of a Fermi gas with a parabolic dispersion binds exactly 1/8 of a fermionic hole. In addition there is a long-ranged power…
We show in this Letter that the ground state degeneracy associated with the presence of non-Abelian anyons can be probed by using an adiabatic cooling process based on the non-Abelian entropy. In particular, we show that when the number of such anyons is increased adiabatically at sufficiently low temperatures, the non-Abelian liquid undergoes cooling, whereas heating occurs in the Abelian case. Estimates are provided for the cooling power produced by the non-Abelian anyon refrigerator, and its implementation in non-Abelian fractional quantum Hall liquids is discussed.
Quantum information scrambling is the spread of local information into correlation throughout the entire quantum many-body system. This concept has become a central topic in different contexts. In this work, we restate the connection between anyon condensation and topological quantum information scrambling in quantum Hall interfaces. We consider the interface between the Abelian Halperin-330 state and the non-Abelian Read-Rezayi state. We verify explicitly that the interface can be fully gapped. This allows the transmutation of local pseudospin information carried by an Abelian anyon into topo…
