Mean-field ansatz for topological phases with string tension

TL;DR

This paper introduces a mean-field ansatz to analyze phase transitions from topological to trivial phases, effectively capturing the deconfinement-confinement transition in string-net models with string tension, especially at large quantum dimensions.

Contribution

It presents a simple variational approach to study topological phase transitions, demonstrating its accuracy and potential for exactness at large quantum dimensions.

Findings

Successfully describes the deconfinement-confinement transition

Effective in the limit of large total quantum dimension

Provides a computationally simple method for topological phase analysis

Abstract

We propose a simple mean-field ansatz to study phase transitions from a topological phase to a trivial phase. We probe the efficiency of this approach by considering the string-net model in the presence of a string tension for any anyon theory. Such a perturbation is known to be responsible for a deconfinement-confinement phase transition which is well described by the present variational setup. We argue that mean-field results become exact in the limit of large total quantum dimension.