Frustrated topological symmetry breaking: geometrical frustration and anyon condensation

Abstract

We study the phase diagram of a topological string-net type lattice model in the presence of geometrically frustrated interactions. These interactions drive several phase transitions that reduce the topological order, leading to a rich phase diagram including both Abelian ($\mathbb{Z}_2$) and non-Abelian ($\text{Ising}\times \overline{\text{Ising}}$) topologically ordered phases, as well as phases with broken translational symmetry. Interestingly, one of these phases simultaneously exhibits (Abelian) topological order and long-ranged order due to translational symmetry breaking, with non-trivial interactions between excitations in the topological order and defects in the long-ranged order. We introduce a variety of effective models, valid along certain lines in the phase diagram, which can be used to characterize both topological and symmetry-breaking order in these phases, and in many cases allow us to characterize the phase transitions that separate them. We use exact diagonalization and high-order series expansion to study areas of the phase diagram where these models break down, and to approximate the location of the phase boundaries.