Edge theories of two-dimensional fermionic symmetry protected topological phases protected by unitary Abelian symmetries

Abstract

Abelian Chern-Simons theory, characterized by the so-called K matrix, has been quite successful in characterizing and classifying Abelian fractional quantum Hall effect as well as symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases, especially for bosonic SPT phases. However, there are still some puzzles in dealing with fermionic SPT (fSPT) phases. In this paper, we utilize the Abelian Chern-Simons theory to study the fSPT phases protected by arbitrary Abelian total symmetry Gf. Comparing to the bosonic SPT phases, fSPT phases with Abelian total symmetry Gf have three new features: (1) they may support gapless Majorana fermion edge modes, (2) some nontrivial bosonic SPT phases may be trivialized if Gf is a nontrivial extension of bosonic symmetry Gb by Z2f, and (3) certain intrinsic fSPT phases can only be realized in interacting fermionic system. We obtain edge theories for various fSPT phases, which can also be regarded as conformal field theories with proper symmetry anomaly. In particular, we discover the construction of Luttinger liquid edge theories with central charge n-1 for type-III bosonic SPT phases protected by (Zn)3 symmetry and the Luttinger liquid edge theories for intrinsically interacting fSPT protected by unitary Abelian symmetry. The ideas and methods used in these examples could be generalized to derive the edge theories of fSPT phases with arbitrary unitary Abelian total symmetry Gf. © 2021 American Physical Society.