Boundary degeneracy of topological order

We introduce the concept of boundary degeneracy, as the ground state degeneracy of topologically ordered states on a compact orientable spatial manifold with gapped boundaries. We emphasize that the boundary degeneracy provides richer information than the bulk degeneracy. Beyond the bulk-edge correspondence, we find the ground state degeneracy of the fully gapped edge modes depends on boundary gapping conditions. By associating different types of boundary gapping conditions as different ways of particle or quasiparticle condensations on the boundary, we develop an analytic theory of gapped boundaries. By Chern-Simons theory, this allows us to derive the ground state degeneracy formula in terms of boundary gapping conditions, which encodes more than the fusion algebra of fractionalized quasiparticles. We apply our theory to Kitaev's toric code and Levin-Wen string-net models. We predict that the Z₂ toric code and Z₂ double-semion model [more generally, the Z_k gauge theory and the U (1_{) k}×U (1_{) -k} nonchiral fractional quantum Hall state at even integer k ] can be numerically and experimentally distinguished, by measuring their boundary degeneracy on an annulus or a cylinder.