Symmetry-enriched topological order from partially gauging symmetry-protected topologically ordered states assisted by measurements

Abstract

Symmetry protected topological phases exhibit nontrivial short-ranged entanglement protected by symmetry and cannot be adiabatically connected to trivial product states while preserving the symmetry. In contrast, intrinsic topological phases do not need ordinary symmetry to stabilize them and their ground states exhibit long-range entanglement. It is known that for a given symmetry group $G$, the 2D SPT phase protected by $G$ is dual to the 2D topological phase exemplified by the twisted quantum double model $D^ω(G)$ via gauging the global symmetry $G$. Recently it was realized that such a general gauging map can be implemented by some local unitaries and local measurements when $G$ is a finite, solvable group. Here, we review the general approach to gauging a $G$-SPT starting from a fixed-point ground-state wave function and applying a $N$-step gauging procedure. We provide an in-depth analysis of the intermediate states emerging during the N-step gauging and provide tools to measure and identify the emerging symmetry-enriched topological order of these states. We construct the generic lattice parent Hamiltonians for these intermediate states, and show that they form an entangled superposition of a twisted quantum double with an SPT ordered state. Notably, we show that they can be connected to the TQD through a finite-depth, local quantum circuit which does not respect the global symmetry of the SET order. We introduce the so-called symmetry branch line operators and show that they can be used to extract the symmetry fractionalization classes and symmetry defectification classes of the SET phases with the input data $G$ and $[ω]\in H^3(G,U(1))$ of the pre-gauged SPT ordered state. We illustrate the procedure of preparing and characterizing the emerging SET ordered states for some Abelian and non-Abelian examples such as dihedral groups $D_n$ and the quaternion group $Q_8$.