Chiral Central Charge from a Single Bulk Wave Function

A (2+1)-dimensional gapped quantum many-body system can have a topologically protected energy current at its edge. The magnitude of this current is determined entirely by the temperature and the chiral central charge, a quantity associated with the effective field theory of the edge. We derive a for...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 128; no. 17; p. 176402
Main Authors Kim, Isaac H, Shi, Bowen, Kato, Kohtaro, Albert, Victor V
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 29.04.2022
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Summary:A (2+1)-dimensional gapped quantum many-body system can have a topologically protected energy current at its edge. The magnitude of this current is determined entirely by the temperature and the chiral central charge, a quantity associated with the effective field theory of the edge. We derive a formula for the chiral central charge that, akin to the topological entanglement entropy, is completely determined by the many-body ground state wave function in the bulk. According to our formula, nonzero chiral central charge gives rise to a topological obstruction that prevents the ground state wave function from being real valued in any local product basis.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.176402