Braided fusion categories, gravitational anomalies, and the mathematical framework for topological orders in any dimensions

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive mathematical framework for topological orders and gravitational anomalies in any dimension, introducing BF categories, topological path integrals, and invariants to classify and understand their properties and boundaries.

Contribution

It introduces BF categories to describe topological excitations, constructs topological path integrals, and establishes invariants and conjectures for classifying topological orders and anomalies across dimensions.

Findings

BF categories classify topological orders and anomalies.

Bosonic topological orders have a topological invariant related to vector bundles.

Specific topological order classes are identified in 2+1D, 4+1D, and 6+1D.

Abstract

Gravitational anomalies can be realized on the boundary of topologically ordered states in one higher dimension and are described by topological orders in one higher dimension. In this paper, we try to develop a general theory for both topological order and gravitational anomaly in any dimensions. (1) We introduce the notion of BF category to describe the braiding and fusion properties of topological excitations that can be point-like, string-like, etc. A subset of BF categories -- closed BF categories -- classify topological orders in any dimensions, while generic BF categories classify (potentially) anomalous topological orders that can appear at a boundary of a gapped quantum liquid in one higher dimension. (2) We introduce topological path integral based on tensor network to realize those topological orders. (3) Bosonic topological orders have an important topological invariant: the vector bundles of the degenerate ground states over the moduli spaces of closed spaces with different metrics. They may fully characterize topological orders. (4) We conjecture that a topological order has a gappable boundary iff the above mentioned vector bundles are flat. (5) We find a holographic phenomenon that every topological order with a gappable boundary can be uniquely determined by the knowledge of the boundary. As a consequence, BF categories in different dimensions form a (monoid) cochain complex, that reveals the structure and relation of topological orders and gravitational anomalies in different dimensions. We also studied the simplest kind of bosonic topological orders that have no non-trivial topological excitations. We find that this kind of topological orders form a $\mathbb{Z}$ class in 2+1D (with gapless edge), a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ class in 4+1D (with gappable boundary), and a $\mathbb{Z}\oplus \mathbb{Z}$ class in 6+1D (with gapless boundary).