Article

Abstract

• We introduce a method, dubbed the flux-fusion anomaly test, to detect certain anomalous symmetry fractionalization patterns in two-dimensional symmetry-enriched topological (SET) phases. We focus on bosonic systems with ℤ2 topological order and a symmetry group of the form G=U(1)⋊G′, where G′ is an arbitrary group that may include spatial symmetries and/or time reversal. The anomalous fractionalization patterns we identify cannot occur in strictly d=2 systems but can occur at surfaces of d=3 symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases. This observation leads to examples of d=3 bosonic topological crystalline insulators (TCIs) that, to our knowledge, have not previously been identified. In some cases, these d=3 bosonic TCIs can have an anomalous superfluid at the surface, which is characterized by nontrivial projective transformations of the superfluid vortices under symmetry. The basic idea of our anomaly test is to introduce fluxes of the U(1) symmetry and to show that some fractionalization patterns cannot be extended to a consistent action of G′ symmetry on the fluxes. For some anomalies, this can be described in terms of dimensional reduction to d=1 SPT phases. We apply our method to several different symmetry groups with nontrivial anomalies, including G=U(1)×ℤT2 and G=U(1)×ℤP2, where ℤT2 and ℤP2 are time-reversal and d=2 reflection symmetry, respectively.

Creator

• Chen, Xie
• Hermele, Michael

Date Issued

• 2016-10-13

Academic Affiliation

• University Libraries

Journal Title

• Physical Review X

Journal Issue/Number

• 4

Journal Volume

• 6

File Extent

• 041006

Last Modified

• 2019-12-09

Resource Type

• Article

Rights Statement

• In Copyright

DOI

•  https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.6.041006

ISSN

• 2160-3308

Language

• English [eng]

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