Commuting Pauli Hamiltonians as maps between free modules

TL;DR

This paper analyzes translation-invariant commuting Pauli Hamiltonians using homological algebra, revealing properties of point-like charges, fractal operators, and topological order in various dimensions.

Contribution

It introduces a homological framework to describe commuting Pauli Hamiltonians and characterizes the nature of charges and operators in different dimensions.

Findings

Point-like charges appear as vertices of fractal operators.

In 3D, topological order implies the existence of nontrivial point charges.

Ground-state degeneracy relates to algebraic set points.

Abstract

We study unfrustrated spin Hamiltonians that consist of commuting tensor products of Pauli matrices. Assuming translation-invariance, a family of Hamiltonians that belong to the same phase of matter is described by a map between modules over the translation-group algebra, so homological methods are applicable. In any dimension every point-like charge appears as a vertex of a fractal operator, and can be isolated with energy barrier at most logarithmic in the separation distance. For a topologically ordered system in three dimensions, there must exist a point-like nontrivial charge. If the ground-state degeneracy is upper bounded by a constant independent of the system size, then the topological charges in three dimensions always appear at the end points of string operators. A connection between the ground state degeneracy and the number of points on an algebraic set is discussed. Tools to handle local Clifford unitary transformations are given.