Published January 22, 2016
| Submitted + Published + Supplemental Material
Journal Article
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Anomalous Quasiparticle Symmetries and Non-Abelian Defects on Symmetrically Gapped Surfaces of Weak Topological Insulators
Abstract
We show that boundaries of 3D weak topological insulators can become gapped by strong interactions while preserving all symmetries, leading to Abelian surface topological order. The anomalous nature of weak topological insulator surfaces manifests itself in a nontrivial action of symmetries on the quasiparticles; most strikingly, translations change the anyon types in a manner impossible in strictly 2D systems with the same symmetry. As a further consequence, screw dislocations form non-Abelian defects that trap ℤ_4 parafermion zero modes.
Additional Information
© 2016 American Physical Society. Received 13 July 2015; revised manuscript received 23 October 2015; published 22 January 2016. We gratefully acknowledge Xie Chen and Michael Levin for valuable discussions. This work was supported by the NSF through Grant No.DMR-1341822 (J. A.); the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (J. A.); the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, a NSF Physics Frontiers Center with support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (D. F.M., A. E., and J. A.); the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at Caltech; and Microsoft Station Q (A. S.), the European Research Council under the European Unions Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC Project MUNATOP (A. S.), the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation, and the Minerva Foundation (A. S.).Attached Files
Published - PhysRevLett.116.036803.pdf
Submitted - 1507.01587v1.pdf
Supplemental Material - wti-suppl.pdf
Files
1507.01587v1.pdf
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 60753
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20151005-090948368
- DMR-1341822
- NSF
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM)
- NSF Physics Frontiers Center
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, Caltech
- Microsoft Station Q
- MU-NATOP
- European Research Council (ERC)
- Binational Science Foundation (USA-Israel)
- Minerva Foundation
- Created
-
2015-10-05Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, Institute for Quantum Information and Matter