Chiral Central Charge from a Single Bulk Wave Function
Isaac H Kim1,2, Bowen Shi3, Kohtaro Kato4,5
1Department of Computer Science, University of California, Davis, Davis 95616, California, USA.
Abstract:
A (2+1)-dimensional gapped quantum many-body system can have a topologically protected energy current at its edge. The magnitude of this current is determined entirely by the temperature and the chiral central charge, a quantity associated with the effective field theory of the edge. We derive a formula for the chiral central charge that, akin to the topological entanglement entropy, is completely determined by the many-body ground state wave function in the bulk. According to our formula, nonzero chiral central charge gives rise to a topological obstruction that prevents the ground state wave function from being real valued in any local product basis.
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