A Recipe for Constructing Frustration-Free Hamiltonians with Gauge and Matter Fields in One and Two Dimensions

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to construct exactly solvable, frustration-free Hamiltonians for lattice gauge theories with matter fields in 2D and 3D, revealing new ground state degeneracies and surface phenomena.

Contribution

It extends state sum constructions to include matter fields, resulting in new models with unique degeneracies and surface states, and connects to known models like quantum double and Walker-Wang.

Findings

Constructed frustration-free, exactly solvable Hamiltonians with matter fields.

Discovered ground state degeneracies depending on matter module classes.

Identified surface deconfined excitations and protected edge modes.

Abstract

State sum constructions, such as Kuperberg's algorithm, give partition functions of physical systems, like lattice gauge theories, in various dimensions by associating local tensors or weights, to different parts of a closed triangulated manifold. Here we extend this construction by including matter fields to build partition functions in both two and three space-time dimensions. The matter fields introduces new weights to the vertices and they correspond to Potts spin configurations described by an $\mathcal{A}$-module with an inner product. Performing this construction on a triangulated manifold with a boundary we obtain the transfer matrices which are decomposed into a product of local operators acting on vertices, links and plaquettes. The vertex and plaquette operators are similar to the ones appearing in the quantum double models (QDM) of Kitaev. The link operator couples the gauge and the matter fields, and it reduces to the usual interaction terms in known models such as $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge theory with matter fields. The transfer matrices lead to Hamiltonians that are frustration-free and are exactly solvable. According to the choice of the initial input, that of the gauge group and a matter module, we obtain interesting models which have a new kind of ground state degeneracy that depends on the number of equivalence classes in the matter module under gauge action. Some of the models have confined flux excitations in the bulk which become deconfined at the surface. These edge modes are protected by an energy gap provided by the link operator. These properties also appear in "confined Walker-Wang" models which are 3D models having interesting surface states. Apart from the gauge excitations there are also excitations in the matter sector which are immobile and can be thought of as defects like in the Ising model. We only consider bosonic matter fields in this paper.