Contributor info: Ms Luisa Eck

Luisa Eck, Paul Fendley

SciPost Phys. 18, 170 (2025) · published 2 June 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Fusion surface models, as introduced by Inamura and Ohmori, extend the concept of anyon chains to 2+1 dimensions, taking fusion 2-categories as their input. In this work, we construct and analyze fusion surface models on the honeycomb lattice built from braided fusion 1-categories. These models preserve mutually commuting plaquette operators and anomalous 1-form symmetries. Their Hamiltonian is chosen to mimic the structure of Kitaev's honeycomb model, which is unitarily equivalent to the Ising fusion surface model. In the anisotropic limit, where one coupling constant is dominant, the fusion surface models reduce to Levin-Wen string-nets. In the isotropic limit, they are described by weakly coupled anyon chains and are likely to realize chiral topological order. We focus on three specific examples: (i) Kitaev's honeycomb model with a perturbation breaking time-reversal symmetry that realizes chiral Ising topological order, (ii) a $\mathbb{Z}_N$ generalization proposed by Barkeshli et al., which potentially realizes chiral parafermion topological order, and (iii) a novel Fibonacci honeycomb model featuring a non-invertible 1-form symmetry.

Luisa Eck, Paul Fendley

SciPost Phys. 16, 127 (2024) · published 21 May 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Strongly interacting models often possess "dualities" subtler than a one-to-one mapping of energy levels. The maps can be non-invertible, as apparent in the canonical example of Kramers and Wannier. We analyse an algebraic structure common to the XXZ spin chain and three other models: Rydberg-blockade bosons with one particle per square of a ladder, a three-state antiferromagnet, and two Ising chains coupled in a zigzag fashion. The structure yields non-invertible maps between the four models while also guaranteeing all are integrable. We construct these maps explicitly utilising topological defects coming from fusion categories and the lattice version of the orbifold construction, and use them to give explicit conformal-field-theory partition functions describing their critical regions. The Rydberg and Ising ladders also possess interesting non-invertible symmetries, with the spontaneous breaking of one in the former resulting in an unusual ground-state degeneracy.