Non-Abelian topological spin liquids from arrays of quantum wires or spin chains

TL;DR

This paper constructs two-dimensional non-Abelian topologically ordered states using arrays of quantum wires or spin chains, revealing new edge states described by conformal field theories and exploring effects of time-reversal symmetry.

Contribution

It introduces a novel scheme to create non-Abelian topological spin liquids from coupled quantum wires, detailing edge states and symmetry effects, with a self-contained review of non-Abelian bosonization.

Findings

Edge states described by minimal model CFTs with $c<1$

Gapped bulk states with non-zero thermal Hall conductance

Recovery of the ten-fold way classification via non-Abelian bosonization

Abstract

We construct two-dimensional non-Abelian topologically ordered states by strongly coupling arrays of one-dimensional quantum wires via interactions. In our scheme, all charge degrees of freedom are gapped, so the construction can use either quantum wires or quantum spin chains as building blocks, with the same end result. The construction gaps the degrees of freedom in the bulk, while leaving decoupled states at the edges that are described by conformal field theories (CFT) in $(1+1)$-dimensional space and time. We consider both the cases where time-reversal symmetry (TRS) is present or absent. When TRS is absent, the edge states are chiral and stable. We prescribe, in particular, how to arrive at all the edge states described by the unitary CFT minimal models with central charges $c<1$. These non-Abelian spin liquid states have vanishing quantum Hall conductivities, but non-zero thermal ones. When TRS is present, we describe scenarios where the bulk state can be a non-Abelian, non-chiral, and gapped quantum spin liquid, or a gapless one. In the former case, we find that the edge states are also gapped. The paper provides a brief review of non-Abelian bosonization and affine current algebras, with the purpose of being self-contained. To illustrate the methods in a warm-up exercise, we recover the ten-fold way classification of two-dimensional non-interacting topological insulators using the Majorana representation that naturally arises within non-Abelian bosonization. Within this scheme, the classification reduces to counting the number of null singular values of a mass matrix, with gapless edge modes present when left and right null eigenvectors exist.