Anyon braiding on a fractal lattice with a local Hamiltonian

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential for topological states in fractal lattice models with local Hamiltonians, using exact diagonalization and proposing experimental realizations with ultracold atoms.

Contribution

It introduces a study of Hofstadter models on fractal lattices with local Hamiltonians and proposes a scheme for quantum simulation using ultracold atoms.

Findings

Particle densities tend to accumulate in locally square-like regions.

Small system sizes limit conclusions about topological properties.

Guidance for future searches for topological states in fractal systems.

Abstract

There is a growing interest in searching for topology in fractal dimensions with the aim of finding different properties and advantages compared to the integer dimensional case. It has previously been shown that the Laughlin state can be adapted to fractal lattices. A key element in doing so is to replace the uniform background charge by a background charge that resides only on the lattice sites. This motivates the study of Hofstadter type models on fractal lattices, in which the magnetic field is present only at the lattice sites. Here, we study such models for hardcore bosons on finite lattices derived from the Sierpinski carpet and on square lattices with open boundary conditions. We find that the system sizes that we can investigate with exact diagonalization are generally too small to judge whether these local models are topological or not. Studying the particle densities on the lattices derived from the Sierpinski carpet, we find that the densities tend to accumulate in the regions that are locally similar to a square lattice. Such accumulation seems to be incompatible with the uniform densities in fractional quantum Hall systems, which might suggest that the models are not topological. Our computations provide guidance for future searches for topology in finite systems. We also propose a scheme to implement both fractal lattices and our proposed local Hamiltonian with ultracold atoms in optical lattices, which could allow for quantum simulators to go beyond the numerical results presented here.