Protected edge modes without symmetry

Abstract

We discuss the question of when a gapped 2D electron system without any symmetry has a protected gapless edge mode. While it is well known that systems with a nonzero thermal Hall conductance, $K_H \neq 0$, support such modes, here we show that robust modes can also occur when $K_H = 0$ -- if the system has quasiparticles with fractional statistics. We show that some types of fractional statistics are compatible with a gapped edge, while others are fundamentally incompatible. More generally, we give a criterion for when an electron system with abelian statistics and $K_H = 0$ can support a gapped edge: we show that a gapped edge is possible if and only if there exists a subset of quasiparticle types $M$ such that (1) all the quasiparticles in $M$ have trivial mutual statistics, and (2) every quasiparticle that is not in $M$ has nontrivial mutual statistics with at least one quasiparticle in $M$. We derive this criterion using three different approaches: a microscopic analysis of the edge, a general argument based on braiding statistics, and finally a conformal field theory approach that uses constraints from modular invariance. We also discuss the analogous result for 2D boson systems.