Criteria for protected edge modes with $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry

TL;DR

This paper establishes a precise criterion for when two-dimensional gapped systems with Abelian anyons and $\

Contribution

It provides a necessary and sufficient condition for protected edge modes in systems with $\

Findings

Criterion applies to bosonic and fermionic systems

Standard null-vector gapping methods are insufficient in some cases

Explicit perturbations can gap edge theories without symmetry breaking

Abstract

We derive a necessary and sufficient criterion for when a two dimensional gapped many-body system with Abelian anyons and a unitary $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry has a protected gapless edge mode. Our criterion is phrased in terms of edge theories --- or more specifically, chiral boson edge theories with $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry --- and it applies to any bosonic or fermionic system whose boundary can be described by such an edge theory. At an operational level, our criterion takes as input a chiral boson edge theory with $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry, and then produces as output a prediction as to whether this edge theory can be gapped without breaking the symmetry. Like previous work, much of our derivation involves constructing explicit perturbations that gap chiral boson edge theories. Interestingly, however, we find that the standard class of gapping perturbations --- namely cosine terms constructed from null-vectors --- is not sufficient to gap some edge theories with $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry, and thus we are forced to go beyond the usual null-vector analysis to establish our results.