Quantum phase transition between symmetry enriched topological phases in tensor-network states

Abstract

Quantum phase transitions between different topologically ordered phases exhibit rich structures and are generically challenging to study in microscopic lattice models. In this work, we propose a tensor-network solvable model that allows us to tune between different symmetry enriched topological (SET) phases. Concretely, we consider a decorated two-dimensional toric code model for which the ground state can be expressed as a two-dimensional tensor-network state with bond dimension $D=3$ and two tunable parameters. We find that the time-reversal (TR) symmetric system exhibits three distinct phases (i) an SET toric code phase in which anyons transform non-trivially under TR, (ii) a toric code phase in which TR does not fractionalize, and (iii) a topologically trivial phase that is adiabatically connected to a product state. We characterize the different phases using the topological entanglement entropy and a membrane order parameter that distinguishes the two SET phases. Along the phase boundary between the SET toric code phase and the toric code phase, the model has an enhanced $U(1)$ symmetry and the ground state is a quantum critical loop gas wavefunction whose squared norm is equivalent to the partition function of the classical $O(2)$ model. By duality transformations, this tensor-network solvable model can also be used to describe transitions between SET double-semion phases and between $\mathbb{Z}_2\times\mathbb{Z}_2^T$ symmetry protected topological phases in two dimensions.