Topological phase transitions in the golden string-net model.

We examine the zero-temperature phase diagram of the two-dimensional Levin-Wen string-net model with Fibonacci anyons in the presence of competing interactions. Combining high-order series expansions around three exactly solvable points and exact diagonalizations, we find that the non-Abelian doubled Fibonacci topological phase is separated from two nontopological phases by different second-order quantum critical points, the positions of which are computed accurately. These trivial phases are separated by a first-order transition occurring at a fourth exactly solvable point where the ground-state manifold is infinitely many degenerate. The evaluation of critical exponents suggests unusual universality classes.

Robustness of a perturbed topological phase.

We investigate the stability of the topological phase of the toric code model in the presence of a uniform magnetic field by means of variational and high-order series expansion approaches. We find that when this perturbation is strong enough, the system undergoes a topological phase transition whose first- or second-order nature depends on the field orientation. When this transition is of second order, it is in the Ising universality class except for a special line on which the critical exponent driving the closure of the gap varies continuously, unveiling a new topological universality class.

Equivalence of critical scaling laws for many-body entanglement in the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model.

We establish a relation between several entanglement properties in the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, which is a system of mutually interacting spins embedded in a magnetic field. We provide analytical proofs that the single-copy entanglement and the global geometric entanglement of the ground state close to and at criticality behave as the entanglement entropy. These results are in deep contrast to what is found in one- dimensional spin systems where these three entanglement measures behave differently.

Creation and manipulation of anyons in the Kitaev model.

We analyze the effect of local spin operators in the Kitaev model on the honeycomb lattice. We show, in perturbation around the isolated-dimer limit, that they create Abelian anyons together with fermionic excitations which are likely to play a role in experiments. We derive the explicit form of the operators creating and moving Abelian anyons without creating fermions and show that it involves multispin operations. Finally, the important experimental constraints stemming from our results are discussed.

Emergent fermions and anyons in the kitaev model.

We study the gapped phase of the Kitaev model on the honeycomb lattice using perturbative continuous unitary transformations. The effective low-energy Hamiltonian is found to be an extended toric code with interacting anyons. High-energy excitations are emerging free fermions which are composed of hard-core bosons with an attached string of spin operators. The excitation spectrum is mapped onto that of a single particle hopping on a square lattice in a magnetic field. We also illustrate how to compute correlation functions in this framework. The present approach yields analytical perturbative results in the thermodynamical limit without using the Majorana or the Jordan-Wigner fermionization initially proposed to solve this problem.

Entanglement entropy beyond the free case.

We present a perturbative method to compute the ground state entanglement entropy for interacting systems. We apply it to a collective model of mutually interacting spins in a magnetic field. At the quantum critical point, the entanglement entropy scales logarithmically with the subsystem size, the system size, and the anisotropy parameter. We determine the corresponding scaling prefactors and evaluate the leading finite-size correction to the entropy. Our analytical predictions are in perfect agreement with numerical results.

Finite-size scaling exponents of the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model.

We study the ground state properties of the critical Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model. Using the Holstein-Primakoff boson representation, and the continuous unitary transformation technique, we compute explicitly the finite-size scaling exponents for the energy gap, the ground state energy, the magnetization, and the spin-spin correlation functions. Finally, we discuss the behavior of the two-spin entanglement in the vicinity of the phase transition.