A lattice realization of general three-dimensional topological order

TL;DR

This paper introduces a lattice model called the membrane-net model for three-dimensional topological orders, enabling systematic study of their properties and excitations using spherical fusion 2-categories.

Contribution

It constructs a 3d membrane-net model based on spherical fusion 2-categories, providing a framework for analyzing all 3d topological orders with gapped boundaries.

Findings

Constructed the partition function and Hamiltonian from state sums of spherical fusion 2-category.

Developed the 3d tube algebra to analyze excitations.

Conjectured a one-to-one correspondence between excitations and irreducible central idempotents.

Abstract

Topological orders are a class of phases of matter that beyond the Landau symmetry breaking paradigm. The two (spatial) dimensional (2d) topological orders have been thoroughly studied. It is known that they can be fully classified by a unitary modular tensor category (UMTC) and a chiral central charge c. And a class of 2d topological orders whose boundary are gappable can be systematically constructed by Levin-Wen model whose ground states are string-net condensed states. Previously, the three spatial dimensional topological orders have been classified based on their canonical boundary described by some special unitary fusion 2-category, $2\mathcal{V}ec_G^\omega$ or an EF 2-category. However, a lattice realization of a three spatial dimensional topological orders with both canonical boundary and arbitrary boundaries are still lacking. In this paper, we construct a 3d membrane-net model based on spherical fusion 2-category, which can be used to systematically study all general 3d topological order with gapped boundary. The partition function and lattice Hamiltonian of the membrane-net model is constructed based on state sum of spherical fusion 2-category. We also construct the 3d tube algebra of the membrane-net model to study excitations in the model. We conjecture all intrinsic excitations in membrane-net model have a one-to-one correspondence with the irreducible central idempotents (ICI) of the 3d tube algebra. We also provide a universal framework to study mutual statistics of all excitations in 3d topological order through 3d tube algebra. Our approach can be straightforwardly generalized to arbitrary dimension.