Contributor info: Dr Weicheng Ye

Chunxiao Liu, Weicheng Ye

SciPost Phys. 18, 161 (2025) · published 20 May 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We compute the mod-2 cohomology ring for three-dimensional (3D) space groups and establish a connection between them and the lattice structure of crystals with space group symmetry. This connection allows us to obtain a complete set of Lieb-Schultz-Mattis constraints, specifying the conditions under which a unique, symmetric, gapped ground state cannot exist in 3D lattice magnets. We associate each of these constraints with an element in the third mod-2 cohomology of the space group, when the internal symmetry acts on-site and its projective representations are classified by powers of $\mathbb{Z}_2$. We demonstrate the relevance of our results to the study of $U(1)$ quantum spin liquids on the 3D pyrochlore lattice. We determine, through anomaly matching, the symmetry fractionalization patterns of both electric and magnetic charges, extending previous results from projective symmetry group classifications.

Weicheng Ye, Liujun Zou

SciPost Phys. 15, 004 (2023) · published 10 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Symmetry acting on a (2+1)$D$ topological order can be anomalous in the sense that they possess an obstruction to being realized as a purely (2+1)$D$ on-site symmetry. In this paper, we develop a (3+1)$D$ topological quantum field theory to calculate the anomaly indicators of a (2+1)$D$ topological order with a general symmetry group $G$, which may be discrete or continuous, Abelian or non-Abelian, contain anti-unitary elements or not, and permute anyons or not. These anomaly indicators are partition functions of the (3+1)$D$ topological quantum field theory on a specific manifold equipped with some $G$-bundle, and they are expressed using the data characterizing the topological order and the symmetry actions. Our framework is applied to derive the anomaly indicators for various symmetry groups, including $\mathbb{Z}_2\times\mathbb{Z}_2$, $\mathbb{Z}_2^T\times\mathbb{Z}_2^T$, $SO(N)$, $O(N)^T$, $SO(N)\times \mathbb{Z}_2^T$, etc, where $\mathbb{Z}_2$ and $\mathbb{Z}_2^T$ denote a unitary and anti-unitary order-2 group, respectively, and $O(N)^T$ denotes a symmetry group $O(N)$ such that elements in $O(N)$ with determinant $-1$ are anti-unitary. In particular, we demonstrate that some anomaly of $O(N)^T$ and $SO(N)\times \mathbb{Z}_2^T$ exhibit symmetry-enforced gaplessness, i.e., they cannot be realized by any symmetry-enriched topological order. As a byproduct, for $SO(N)$ symmetric topological orders, we derive their $SO(N)$ Hall conductance.

Weicheng Ye, Meng Guo, Yin-Chen He, Chong Wang, Liujun Zou

SciPost Phys. 13, 066 (2022) · published 26 September 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Lieb-Schultz-Mattis (LSM) theorems provide powerful constraints on the emergibility problem, i.e. whether a quantum phase or phase transition can emerge in a many-body system. We derive the topological partition functions that characterize the LSM constraints in spin systems with $G_s\times G_{int}$ symmetry, where $G_s$ is an arbitrary space group in one or two spatial dimensions, and $G_{int}$ is any internal symmetry whose projective representations are classified by $\mathbb{Z}_2^k$ with $k$ an integer. We then apply these results to study the emergibility of a class of exotic quantum critical states, including the well-known deconfined quantum critical point (DQCP), $U(1)$ Dirac spin liquid (DSL), and the recently proposed non-Lagrangian Stiefel liquid. These states can emerge as a consequence of the competition between a magnetic state and a non-magnetic state. We identify all possible realizations of these states on systems with $SO(3)\times \mathbb{Z}_2^T$ internal symmetry and either $p6m$ or $p4m$ lattice symmetry. Many interesting examples are discovered, including a DQCP adjacent to a ferromagnet, stable DSLs on square and honeycomb lattices, and a class of quantum critical spin-quadrupolar liquids of which the most relevant spinful fluctuations carry spin-$2$. In particular, there is a realization of spin-quadrupolar DSL that is beyond the usual parton construction. We further use our formalism to analyze the stability of these states under symmetry-breaking perturbations, such as spin-orbit coupling. As a concrete example, we find that a DSL can be stable in a recently proposed candidate material, NaYbO$_2$.