I will discuss recent advances in our understanding of extrinsic defects in topologically ordered states. These include line defects, where I will discuss recent developments in the classification of gapped boundaries between Abelian topological states, and various kinds of point defects, which host a rich set of topological physics. The extrinsic point defects provide a new way of realizing topologically protected ground state degeneracies, they carry projective non-abelian statistics even in an Abelian topological state and provide a new path towards universal topological quantum computation, they host a general class of topologically protected "parafermion" zero modes, and they provide an avenue towards distinguishing various symmetry-enriched topological phases. I will discuss several novel physical realizations of such point defects, and also a recent experimental proposal to realize such defects in conventional bilayer fractional quantum Hall systems.
Fractional quantum hall states with nu = p/q have a characteristic geometry defined by the electric quadrupole moment of the neutral composite boson that is formed by "flux attachment" of q "flux quanta" (guiding-center orbitals) to p charged particles. This characterizes the "Hall viscosity". For FQHE states described by a conformal field theory with a Euclidean metric g_ab, the quadrupole moment is proportional to the "guiding-center spin" of the composite boson and the inverse metric. The geometry gives rise to dipole moments at external edges or internal "orbital entanglement cuts", and can be seen in the entanglement spectrum.
The symmetric Kugel-Khomskii can be seen as a minimal model describing the interactions between spin and orbital degrees of freedom in certain transition-metal oxides with orbital degeneracy, and it is equivalent to the SU(4) Heisenberg model of four-color fermionic atoms. We present simulation results for this model on various two-dimensional lattices obtained with infinite projected-entangled pair states (iPEPS), an efficient variational tensor-network ansatz for two dimensional wave functions in the thermodynamic limit. We find a rich variety of exotic phases: while on the square and checkerboard lattices the ground state exhibits dimer-N\'eel order and plaquette order, respectively, quantum fluctuations on the honeycomb lattice destroy any order, giving rise to a spin-orbital liquid. Our results are supported from flavor-wave theory and exact diagonalization. Furthermore, the properties of the spin-orbital liquid state on the honeycomb lattice are accurately accounted for by a projected variational wave-function based on the pi-flux state of fermions on the honeycomb lattice at 1/4-filling. In that state, correlations are algebraic because of the presence of a Dirac point at the Fermi level, suggesting that the ground state is an algebraic spin-orbital liquid. This model provides a possible starting point to understand the recently discovered spin-orbital liquid behavior of Ba_3CuSb_2O_9. The present results also suggest to choose optical lattices with honeycomb geometry in the search for quantum liquids in ultra-cold four-color fermionic atoms.
Projected Entangled Pair States (PEPS) provide a local description of correlated many-body states. I will discuss how PEPS can be used to characterize topological spin liquids, in particular Resonating Valence Bond states. On the one hand, I will show how the symmetries in the local PEPS description allow to identify that these states appear as topologically degenerate ground states of local Hamiltonians. On the other hand, I will discuss how from exact diagonalization of the transfer operator one can extract both the topological order and the spin liquid nature of the ground state.
In this talk I will show how to obtain a detailed characterization of the emergent topological order starting from microscopic Hamiltonian on a two dimensional lattice. A key step is to obtain a tensor network representation for a complete set of ground states of the Hamiltonian, first on an infinite cylinder and then on a finite torus. As an application of the method I will study lattice Hamiltonians that give rise to selected anyon models, namely chiral semion, Ising as well as Z_3 and Z_5 models.
Given two lattice Hamiltonians H_1 and H_2 that are identical everywhere except on a local region R of the lattice, we propose a relationship between their ground states psi_1 and psi_2. Specifically, assuming the states can be represented as multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA), we propose a principle of directed influence which asserts that the tensors in the MERA’s that represent the ground states can be chosen to be identical everywhere except within a specific, localized region of the tensor network. The validity of this principle is justified by demonstrating it to follow from Wilson's renormalization ideas towards systems with manifestly separated energy scales. This result is shown, through numerical examples, to have practical applications towards the efficient simulation of systems with impurities, boundaries and interfaces, and also argued to provide useful insights towards holographic representations of quantum states.
I will review recent work in our group using Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) to search for and study quantum spin liquid and topologically ordered states in two dimensional model Hamiltonians. This proves an efficient way to study these phases in semi-realistic situations. I will try to draw lessons from several studies and theoretical considerations.
We discuss the general features of charge transport of quantum critical points described by CFTs in 2+1D. Our main tool is the AdS/CFT correspondence, but we will make connections to standard field theory results and to recent quantum Monte Carlo data. We emphasize the importance of poles and zeros of the response functions. In the holographic setting, these are the discrete quasinormal modes of a black hole/brane; they map to the excitations of the CFT. We further describe the role of particle-vortex or S-duality on the conductivity, which is argued to obey two powerful sum rules. References (with S. Sachdev): arXiv:1210.4166 (PRB 12); arXiv:1302.0847 (PRB 13)
In this talk, I will discuss about the notion of quantum renormalization group, and explain how (D+1)-dimensional gravitational theories naturally emerge as dual descriptions for D-dimensional quantum field theories. It will be argued that the dynamical gravitational field in the bulk encodes the entanglement between low energy modes and high energy modes of the corresponding quantum field theory.