2012/09/30 by Paul Fendley · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.stat-mech #cond-mat.str-el #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1742-5468/2012/11/p11020
published as J. Stat. Mech. (2012) P11020 · 22 pages. v2: small changes, added references
arxiv created 2012/10/02 · arxiv updated 2015/06/11
A sign of topological order in a gapped one-dimensional quantum chain is the existence of edge zero modes. These occur in the Z2-invariant Ising/Majorana chain, where they can be understood using free-fermion techniques. Here I discuss their presence in spin chains with Zn symmetry, and prove that for appropriate coupling they are exact, even in this strongly interacting system. These modes are naturally expressed in terms of parafermions, generalizations of fermions to the Zn case. I show that parafermionic 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.