Anyon quantum dimensions from an arbitrary ground state wave function

Abstract

Realizing topological orders and topological quantum computation is a central task of modern physics. An important but notoriously hard question in this endeavor is how to diagnose topological orders that lack conventional order parameters. A breakthrough in this problem is the discovery of topological entanglement entropy, which can be used to detect nontrivial topological order from a ground state wave function, but is far from enough for fully determining the topological order. In this work, we take a key step further in this direction: We propose a simple entanglement-based protocol for extracting the quantum dimensions of all anyons from a single ground state wave function in two dimensions. The choice of the space manifold and the ground state is arbitrary. This protocol is both validated in the continuum and verified on lattices, and we anticipate it to be realizable in various quantum simulation platforms.

Topological entanglement entropy has been used to detect topological orders but it cannot distinguish abelian and non-abelian orders. This work potentially solves this problem using a new entanglement-based protocol for characterizing topological phases with anyons from a single ground state wavefunction in 2D.