Complete characterization of non-Abelian topological phase transitions and detection of anyon splitting with projected entangled pair states

Abstract

Topological phases - systems with a global ordering in the entanglement - exhibit exotic excitations known as anyons which can display highly nontrivial (non-Abelian) statistics. Through transitions between such phases, these anyons can undergo rather surprising changes. Perhaps most surprisingly, one anyon can split into two or more anyons, some of which might condense or become confined. The authors propose here a complete set of order parameters which allow one to extract the full information about how the properties of anyons change through phase transitions, and to apply them to a range of topological phase transitions.

Topics & Concepts