Topological order from parafermions

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Paul Fendley, Oxford University, All Souls College
• Thursday 12 February 2015, 14:15-15:15
• TCM Seminar Room, Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Physics.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr G Moller.

Much effort has been devoted to the study of systems with topological order, motivated by practical issues as well as more field-theoretical and mathematical concerns. A sign of topological order in a gapped one-dimensional quantum chain is the existence of edge zero modes. These occur in the Z_2-invariant Ising/Majorana chain, where they can be understood using free-fermion techniques. Here I show they also occur in strongly interacting spin chains with Z_n symmetry, and are naturally expressed in terms of parafermions. Strikingly, these edge zero modes do not occur in the usual ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic cases, but rather only when the interactions are chiral, so that spatial-parity and time-reversal symmetries are broken. I will also discuss how some of these ideas can be applied profitably to two-dimensional models.

This talk is part of the Combined TCM Seminars and TCM blackboard seminar listing series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Cavendish Laboratory Seminars
• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Centre for Health Leadership and Enterprise
• Combined TCM Seminars and TCM blackboard seminar listing
• Featured lists
• Lennard-Jones Centre external
• ME Seminar
• Neurons, Fake News, DNA and your iPhone: The Mathematics of Information
• PMRFPS's
• School of Physical Sciences
• TCM Seminar Room, Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Physics
• Theory of Condensed Matter
• Thin Film Magnetic Talks
• few29

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.