One dimensional gapped quantum phases and enriched fusion categories

In this work, we use Ising chain and Kitaev chain to check the validity of an earlier proposal in arXiv:2011.02859 that enriched fusion (higher) categories provide a unified categorical description of all gapped/gapless quantum liquid phases, including symmetry-breaking phases, topological orders, SPT/SET orders and certain gapless quantum phases. In particular, we show explicitly that, in each gapped phase realized by these two models, the spacetime observables form a fusion category enriched in a braided fusion category. In the end, we provide a classification of and the categorical descriptions of all 1-dimensional (the spatial dimension) gapped quantum phases with a finite onsite symmetry.

Categories of topological orders II

In this second part of a series work, we further develop the theory of higher fusion categories, including center functors, centralizers and group theoretic higher fusion categories. Along the way we prove several conjectures on modular extensions and the representation categories of finite higher groups.

Enriched monoidal categories I: centers

This work is the first one in a series, in which we develop a mathematical theory of enriched (braided) monoidal categories and their representations. In this work, we introduce the notion of the $E_0$-center ($E_1$-center or $E_2$-center) of an enriched (monoidal or braided monoidal) category, and compute the centers explicitly when the enriched (braided monoidal or monoidal) categories are obtained from the canonical constructions. These centers have important applications in the mathematical theory of gapless boundaries of 2+1D topological orders and that of topological phase transitions in physics. They also play very important roles in the higher representation theory, which is the focus of the second work in the series.

Categorical computation

In quantum computation, the computation is achieved by linear operators in Hilbert spaces. In this work, we explain an idea of a new computation scheme, in which the linear operators are replaced by (higher) functors between two (higher) categories. The fundamental problem in realizing this idea is the physical realization of (higher) functors. We provide a theoretical idea of realizing (higher) functors based on the physics of topological orders.

New Constructions of Optimal Locally Repairable Codes with Super-Linear Length

As an important coding scheme in modern distributed storage systems, locally repairable codes (LRCs) have attracted a lot of attentions from perspectives of both practical applications and theoretical research. As a major topic in the research of LRCs, bounds and constructions of the corresponding optimal codes are of particular concerns. In this work, codes with $(r,delta)$-locality which have optimal minimal distance w.r.t. the bound given by Prakash et al. cite{Prakash2012Optimal} are considered. Through parity check matrix approach, constructions of both optimal $(r,delta)$-LRCs with all symbol locality ($(r,delta)_a$-LRCs) and optimal $(r,delta)$-LRCs with information locality ($(r,delta)_i$-LRCs) are provided. As a generalization of a work of Xing and Yuan cite{XY19}, these constructions are built on a connection between sparse hypergraphs and optimal $(r,delta)$-LRCs. With the help of constructions of large sparse hypergraphs, the length of codes constructed can be super-linear in the alphabet size. This improves upon previous constructions when the minimal distance of the code is at least $3delta+1$. As two applications, optimal H-LRCs with super-linear length and GSD codes with unbounded length are also constructed.

Categories of topological orders I

We develop the mathematical theory of separable and unitary $n$-categories based on Gaiotto and Johnson-Freyds theory of condensation completion. We use it to study the categories of topological orders by including gapless quantum phases and defects. In particular, we show that all the topological features of a potentially gapless quantum phase can be captured by its topological skeleton, and that the category of the topological skeletons of higher dimensional gapped/gapless quantum phases can be explicitly computed categorically from a simple coslice 1-category.

Inverse problems of the ErdH{o}s-Ko-Rado type theorems for families of vector spaces and permutations

Ever since the famous ErdH{o}s-Ko-Rado theorem initiated the study of intersecting families of subsets, extremal problems regarding intersecting properties of families of various combinatorial objects have been extensively investigated. Among them, studies about families of subsets, vector spaces and permutations are of particular concerns. Recently, the authors proposed a new quantitative intersection problem for families of subsets: For $mathcal{F}subseteq {[n]choose k}$, define its emph{total intersection number} as $mathcal{I}(mathcal{F})=sum_{F_1,F_2in mathcal{F}}|F_1cap F_2|$. Then, what is the structure of $mathcal{F}$ when it has the maximal total intersection number among all families in ${[n]choose k}$ with the same family size? In cite{KG2020}, the authors studied this problem and characterized extremal structures of families maximizing the total intersection number of given sizes. In this paper, we consider the analogues of this problem for families of vector spaces and permutations. For certain ranges of family size, we provide structural characterizations for both families of subspaces and families of permutations having maximal total intersection numbers. To some extent, these results determine the unique structure of the optimal family for some certain values of $|mathcal{F}|$ and characterize the relation between having maximal total intersection number and being intersecting. Besides, we also show several upper bounds on the total intersection numbers for both families of subspaces and families of permutations of given sizes.

Toward Cross-Lingual Definition Generation for Language Learners

Generating dictionary definitions automatically can prove useful for language learners. However, its still a challenging task of cross-lingual definition generation. In this work, we propose to generate definitions in English for words in various languages. To achieve this, we present a simple yet effective approach based on publicly available pretrained language models. In this approach, models can be directly applied to other languages after trained on the English dataset. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach on zero-shot definition generation. Experiments and manual analyses on newly constructed datasets show that our models have a strong cross-lingual transfer ability and can generate fluent English definitions for Chinese words. We further measure the lexical complexity of generated and reference definitions. The results show that the generated definitions are much simpler, which is more suitable for language learners.

Defects in the 3-dimensional toric code model form a braided fusion 2-category

It was well known that there are $e$-particles and $m$-strings in the 3-dimensional (spatial dimension) toric code model, which realizes the 3-dimensional $mathbb{Z}_2$ topological order. Recent mathematical result, however, shows that there are additional string-like topological defects in the 3-dimensional $mathbb{Z}_2$ topological order. In this work, we construct all topological defects of codimension 2 and higher, and show that they form a braided fusion 2-category satisfying a braiding non-degeneracy condition.

Algebraic higher symmetry and categorical symmetry -- a holographic and entanglement view of symmetry

We introduce the notion of algebraic higher symmetry, which generalizes higher symmetry and is beyond higher group. We show that an algebraic higher symmetry in a bosonic system in $n$-dimensional space is characterized and classified by a local fusion $n$-category. We find another way to describe algebraic higher symmetry by restricting to symmetric sub Hilbert space where symmetry transformations all become trivial. In this case, algebraic higher symmetry can be fully characterized by a non-invertible gravitational anomaly (i.e. an topological order in one higher dimension). Thus we also refer to non-invertible gravitational anomaly as categorical symmetry to stress its connection to symmetry. This provides a holographic and entanglement view of symmetries. For a system with a categorical symmetry, its gapped state must spontaneously break part (not all) of the symmetry, and the state with the full symmetry must be gapless. Using such a holographic point of view, we obtain (1) the gauging of the algebraic higher symmetry; (2) the classification of anomalies for an algebraic higher symmetry; (3) the equivalence between classes of systems, with different (potentially anomalous) algebraic higher symmetries or different sets of low energy excitations, as long as they have the same categorical symmetry; (4) the classification of gapped liquid phases for bosonic/fermionic systems with a categorical symmetry, as gapped boundaries of a topological order in one higher dimension (that corresponds to the categorical symmetry). This classification includes symmetry protected trivial (SPT) orders and symmetry enriched topological (SET) orders with an algebraic higher symmetry.