Through the looking glass of unconventional topological phases and fractionalization
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Ever since quantum mechanics and relativity appeared at the beginning of the 20th century, physics has been rocked to its foundations. Novel ideas and applications surged relentlessly from the minds of those brave enough to venture into the unknown new worlds revealed by the new sciences. This year marks the centenary of Heisenberg’s quantum mechanics, and the exploration has not waned; rather, the frontiers of our knowledge now extend beyond fundamental theories into the complex playground of symmetry, topology, and emergence. We are faced with the challenge of understanding and predicting the behavior of complex systems in which the interplay of all three is essential for explaining their unique phenomena. Amid such an insurmountable challenge, novel viewpoints and signatures can often guide us through this dense web of complexity. In this doctoral thesis, we explore distinct scenarios where the intertwining of symmetry and topology naturally leads to previously unexplored phenomena, and subtle signatures arise from the combination of old and new theoretical frameworks in the weak and strong coupling regimes. In part one, we study weakly interacting topological phases. In chapter 2, we introduce the idea of time-reversal invariant finite-size topology. We identify signatures of a higher-dimensional bulk topological phase within thin films and wires; we probe this via Wilson loop spectroscopy and electromagnetic responses. Chapter 3 deals with extending previously studied topological skyrmion phases to time-reversal invariant systems. A generalization of the time-reversal parity invariant corresponds to a bulk-boundary texture of the pseudo-spin degrees of freedom. Moreover, our skyrmion invariant is directly linked to a reduced entanglement spectrum with protected spectral flow. Part two of this thesis is dedicated to strongly interacting electrons, where the effective description is that of a network of spins displaying the unconventional physics of spin liquids. In chapter 4, we describe how fractionalization can be generalized in classical spin liquids to yield irrational magnetic moments of dilution clusters. These clusters act as gauge charges for the low-energy lattice gauge theory. Moreover, we show that for a higher-rank gauge theory, distinctive emergent non-decaying spin textures and interactions are hallmarks of the unusual topological magnet. Chapter 5 studies a fragile spin liquid in three dimensions, which displays fractionalization but no algebraically decaying correlations. We find that not only is the Heisenberg model disordered, but the Ising model is as well. Perturbing away, we find a special point where quantum fluctuations stabilize a Z_2 quantum spin liquid.
Author: Flores Calderon, Rafael Alvaro
Language: English
Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7112946255