Fermion Condensation and Gapped Domain Walls in Topological Orders

Abstract

We propose the concept of fermion condensation in bosonic topological orders in two spatial dimensions. Fermion condensation can be realized as gapped domain walls between bosonic and fermionic topological orders, which are thought of as a real-space phase transitions from bosonic to fermionic topological orders. This generalizes the previous idea of understanding boson condensation as gapped domain walls between bosonic topological orders. We show that generic fermion condensation obeys a Hierarchy Principle by which it can be decomposed into a boson condensation followed by a minimal fermion condensation, which involves a single self-fermion that is its own anti-particle and has unit quantum dimension. We then develop the rules of minimal fermion condensation, which together with the known rules of boson condensation, provides a full set of rules of fermion condensation. Our studies point to an exact mapping between the Hilbert spaces of a bosonic topological order and a fermionic topological order that share a gapped domain wall.