Abelian and non-Abelian chiral spin liquids in a compact tensor network representation

We provide new insights into the Abelian and non-Abelian chiral Kitaev spin liquids on the star lattice using the recently proposed loop gas (LG) and string gas (SG) states [H.-Y. Lee, R. Kaneko, T. Okubo, N. Kawashima, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 087203 (2019)]. Those are compactly represented in the language of tensor network. By optimizing only one or two variational parameters, accurate ansatze are found in the whole phase diagram of the Kitaev model on the star lattice. In particular, the variational energy of the LG state becomes exact(within machine precision) at two limits in the model, and the criticality at one of those is analytically derived from the LG feature. It reveals that the Abelian CSLs are well demonstrated by the short-ranged LG while the non-Abelian CSLs are adiabatically connected to the critical LG where the macroscopic loops appear. Furthermore, by constructing the minimally entangled states and exploiting their entanglement spectrum and entropy, we identify the nature of anyons and the chiral edge modes in the non-Abelian phase with the Ising conformal field theory.

Gapless Kitaev Spin Liquid to Classical String Gas through Tensor Networks

We provide a framework for understanding the gapless Kitaev spin liquid (KSL) in the language of tensor network(TN). Without introducing Majorana fermion, most of the features of the KSL including the symmetries, gauge structure, criticality and vortex-freeness are explained in a compact TN representation. Our construction reveals a hidden string gas structure of the KSL. With only two variational parameters to adjust, we obtain an accurate KSL ansatz with the bond dimension D = 8 in a compact form, where the energy is about 0.007% higher than the exact one. In addition, the opening of gap and non-Abelian phase driven by a magnetic field are naturally understood in our construction.