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Non-Abelian adiabatic statistics and Hall viscosity in quantum Hall states and px+ipy paired superfluids

N. Read
Phys. Rev. B 79, 045308 – Published 15 January 2009

Abstract

Many trial wave functions for fractional quantum Hall states in a single Landau level are given by functions called conformal blocks, taken from some conformal field theory. Also, wave functions for certain paired states of fermions in two dimensions, such as px+ipy states, reduce to such a form at long distances. Here we investigate the adiabatic transport of such many-particle trial wave functions using methods from two-dimensional field theory. One context for this is to calculate the statistics of widely separated quasiholes, which has been predicted to be non-Abelian in a variety of cases. The Berry phase or matrix (holonomy) resulting from adiabatic transport around a closed loop in parameter space is the same as the effect of analytic continuation around the same loop with the particle coordinates held fixed (monodromy), provided the trial functions are orthonormal and holomorphic in the parameters so that the Berry vector potential (or connection) vanishes. We show that this is the case (up to a simple area term) for paired states (including the Moore-Read quantum Hall state) and present general conditions for it to hold for other trial states (such as the Read-Rezayi series). We argue that trial states based on a nonunitary conformal field theory do not describe a gapped topological phase, at least in many cases. By considering adiabatic variation in the aspect ratio of the torus, we calculate the Hall viscosity, a nondissipative viscosity coefficient analogous to Hall conductivity, for paired states, Laughlin states, and more general quantum Hall states. Hall viscosity is an invariant within a topological phase and is generally proportional to the “conformal spin density” in the ground state.

  • Received 19 July 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.79.045308

©2009 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

N. Read

  • Department of Physics, Yale University, P.O. Box 208120, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8120, USA

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Issue

Vol. 79, Iss. 4 — 15 January 2009

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