Condensed Matter

The orbital angular momentum in a chiral superfluid has posed a paradox for several decades. For example, for the $p+ip$-wave superfluid of $N$ fermions, the total orbital angular momentum should be $N/2$ if all the fermions form Cooper pairs. On the other hand, it appears to be substantially suppressed from $N/2$, considering that only the fermions near the Fermi surface would be affected by the pairing interaction. To resolve the long-standing question, we studied chiral superfluids in a two-dimensional circular well, in terms of a conserved charge and spectral flows. We find that the total orbital angular momentum takes the full value $N/2$ in the chiral $p+ip$-wave superfluid, while it is strongly suppressed in higher-order ($d+id$ etc.) chiral superfluids. This surprising difference is elucidated in terms of edge states.

Matrix product operators form a natural language for describing topological quantum order. I will discuss how they arise as symmetries in PEPS, how anyon excitations arise as end points on them, and how the virtual indices of the MPO's provide a tensor product structure for the logical qubits in topological quantum computation.

Using the method of flux fusion anomaly test recently developed by M. Hermele and X. Chen (arXiv:1508.00573), we show that the possible ways of fractionalize crystal symmetry is greatly restricted if we assume the spin liquid has an SU(2) spin rotation symmetry and the spinon carries a half-integer spin. For a Z_2 spin liquid, under these assumptions the vison can only take the crystal symmetry fractionalization described by the Ising gauge theory. For a chiral spin liquid these assumptions imply that the spinon must also take fractionalized quantum numbers of crystal symmetries.

In this talk, we will analyze the properties of the bosonic $\nu = 1$ Moore-Read state when used to build a state
which is strongly believed to be a non-Abelian spin-1 chiral spin liquid state [1]. In this state the bosonic $\nu = 1$
Moore-Read Pfaffian wavefunction is interpreted as a wavefunction for a gas of bosons on a 2D square lattice with one flux quantum per plaquette. We investigate the properties of this wavefunction for the case of planar geometry and for the case of the system living on a torus. For the latter case, there are three distinct states corresponding to the three-fold degeneracy of the $\nu = 1$
bosonic Moore-Read state [2]. Our results show that correlation functions in these states become identical in the limit of large system size. Further issues investigated include the result that the three wavefunctions on the torus are linearly independent and orthogonal in the thermodynamic limit. Additionally, the Renyi entanglement entropy is also calculated for different system partitions in order to extract the topological entanglement entropy $\gamma$.

[1] M. Greiter and R. Thomale, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 207203 (2009).
[2] S. B. Chung and M. Stone, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 40, 4923 (2007).

A pedagogic introduction will be given to: i) Emergent Majorana fermions and Majorana zero modes in certain condensed matter models and ii) Kondo insulators. This will be followed by discussion of a remarkable Quantum Oscillation Anomaly seen in recent experiments in SmB6, a Kondo insulator, by the Cambridge group [1], as providing evidence [2] for presence of Majorana fermi sea, in an unexpected place. We show a counter intuitive result that these Majorana fermions though neutral, exhibit Landau diamagnetism.

[1] B.S. Tan et al., Science, vol.349, pp. 287-29 (2015), arXiv:1507.01129 [1] G. Baskaran, arXiv:1507.03477

In describing condensed matter, some well established paradigms have allowed much progress to be made in understanding and using materials.  But in the last 15 - 20 years, new materials, such as heavy fermions, high temperature superconductors, and now charge density wave-supporting materials,  have been shown to require new paradigms in describing them.  While much progress has been achieved in that time, we still do not have  a widely accepted theoretical description of the nature of their electronic excitations.