Topological degeneracy of quantum Hall fluids
Abstract
We present a simple approach to calculate the degeneracy and the structure of the ground states of non-Abelian quantum Hall (QH) liquids on the torus. Our approach can be applied to any QH liquids (Abelian or non-Abelian) obtained from the parton construction. We explain our approach by studying a series of examples of increasing complexity. When the effective theory of a non-Abelian QH liquid is a non-Abelian Chern-Simons (CS) theory, our approach reproduces the well-known results for the ground-state degeneracy of the CS theory. However, our approach also applies to non-Abelian QH liquids whose effective theories are not known and which cannot be written as a non-Abelian CS theory. We find that the ground states on a torus of all non-Abelian QH liquids obtained from the parton construction can be described by points on a lattice inside a ``folded unit cell.'' The folding is generated by reflection, rotations, etc. Thus the ground-state structures on the torus described by the ``folded unit cells'' provide a way to (at least partially) classify non-Abelian QH liquids obtained from the parton construction.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review B
- Pub Date:
- December 1998
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevB.58.15717
- arXiv:
- arXiv:cond-mat/9711223
- Bibcode:
- 1998PhRvB..5815717W
- Keywords:
-
- 73.40.Hm;
- 03.65.Fd;
- 02.20.Km;
- Algebraic methods;
- Condensed Matter - Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics;
- Condensed Matter - Strongly Correlated Electrons;
- High Energy Physics - Theory
- E-Print:
- 33 pages, LaTeX+epsf, 2 eps figures. Expanded version