Modular transformation and bosonic/fermionic topological orders in Abelian fractional quantum Hall states

Abstract

The non-Abelian geometric phases of the robust degenerate ground states were proposed as physically measurable defining properties of topological order in 1990. In this paper we discuss in detail such a quantitative characterization of topological order, using generic Abelian fractional quantum Hall states as examples. We find a way to determine even the pure U(1) phase of the non-Abelian geometric phases. We show that the non-Abelian geometric phases not only contain information about the quasi-particle statistics, they also contain information about the chiral central charge Delta c mod 24 of the edge states, as well as the Hall viscosity. Thus, the non-Abelian geometric phases (both the Abelian part and the non-Abelian part) provide a quite complete way to characterize 2D topological order.