Fermion Condensation and Gapped Domain Walls in Topological Orders
Fermion Condensation and Gapped Domain Walls in Topological Orders Yidun Wan1,2, ∗ and Chenjie Wang2, † 1Department of Physics and Center for Field Theory and Particle Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China 2Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, ON N2L 2Y5, Canada (Dated: September 12, 2018) We propose the concept of fermion condensation in bosonic topological orders in two spatial dimensions. Fermion condensation can be realized as gapped domain walls between bosonic and fermionic topological orders, which are thought of as a real-space phase transitions from bosonic to fermionic topological orders. This generalizes the previous idea of understanding boson conden- sation as gapped domain walls between bosonic topological orders. We show that generic fermion condensation obeys a Hierarchy Principle by which it can be decomposed into a boson condensation followed by a minimal fermion condensation, which involves a single self-fermion that is its own anti-particle and has unit quantum dimension. We then develop the rules of minimal fermion con- densation, which together with the known rules of boson condensation, provides a full set of rules of fermion condensation. Our studies point to an exact mapping between the Hilbert spaces of a bosonic topological order and a fermionic topological order that share a gapped domain wall. PACS numbers: 11.15.-q, 71.10.-w, 05.30.Pr, 71.10.Hf, 02.10.Kn, 02.20.Uw I. INTRODUCTION to condensing self-bosons in a bTO. A particularly inter- esting question is: Is it possible to condense self-fermions, A gapped quantum matter phase with intrinsic topo- which have nontrivial braiding statistics with some other logical order has topologically protected ground state anyons in the system? At a first glance, fermion conden- degeneracy and anyon excitations1,2 on which quantum sation might be counterintuitive; however, in this work, computation may be realized via anyon braiding, which is we propose a physical context in which fermion conden- robust against errors due to local perturbation3,4.
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