Topological Orders with Global Gauge Anomalies

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the boundary states of symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases can be gapped out into topological orders when they exhibit global gauge anomalies, revealing conditions under which boundary gapping is possible.

Contribution

It demonstrates that boundary states with only global gauge anomalies, not perturbative ones, can be gapped into topological orders, with explicit examples involving 3D and 4D boundary systems.

Findings

Boundaries with perturbative anomalies remain gapless.

Boundaries with only global anomalies can be gapped into topological orders.

Certain topological orders cannot be trivialized without breaking symmetry.

Abstract

By definition, the physics of the $d-$dimensional (dim) boundary of a $(d+1)-$dim symmetry protected topological (SPT) state cannot be realized as itself on a $d-$dim lattice. If the symmetry of the system is unitary, then a formal way to determine whether a $d-$dim theory must be a boundary or not, is to couple this theory to a gauge field (or to "gauge" its symmetry), and check if there is a gauge anomaly. In this paper we discuss the following question: can the boundary of a SPT state be driven into a fully gapped topological order which preserves all the symmetries? We argue that if the gauge anomaly of the boundary is "perturbative", then the boundary must remain gapless; while if the boundary only has global gauge anomaly but no perturbative anomaly, then it is possible to gap out the boundary by driving it into a topological state, when $d \geq 2$. We will demonstrate this conclusion with two examples: (1) the $3d$ spin-1/2 chiral fermion with the well-known Witten's global anomaly, which is the boundary of a $4d$ topological superconductor with SU(2) or U(1)$\rtimes Z_2$ symmetry; and (2) the $4d$ boundary of a $5d$ topological superconductor with the same symmetry. We show that these boundary systems can be driven into a fully gapped $\mathbb{Z}_{2N}$ topological order with topological degeneracy, but this $\mathbb{Z}_{2N}$ topological order cannot be future driven into a trivial confined phase that preserves all the symmetries due to some special properties of its topological defects.