Detecting two dimensional symmetry protected topological order in a ground state wave function

Abstract

Symmetry protected topological states cannot be deformed to a trivial state so long as the symmetry is preserved, yet there is no local order parameter that can distinguish them from a trivial state. We demonstrate how to detect whether a two dimensional ground state has symmetry protected topological order; the measurements play a similar role as the topological entanglement entropy does for detecting anyons. For any finite abelian onsite symmetry, the measurement completely determines the 3rd cohomology class that characterizes the order. The proposed measurement is validated numerically using the infinite density matrix renormalization group for a model with $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry protected order.