Chiral Edge States in 2+1 Dimensional Topological Phases

Abstract

Chiral edge states of 2+1 dimensional Abelian and non-Abelian topological phases can be represented by chiral conformal field theories with integer and non-integer values of central charge, respectively. In this work we describe certain edge states in terms of constrained fermionic fields that realize chiral coset CFT structures. This construction arises naturally in the so-called quantum wires approach for topological phases and allows for representing fractionalized edge states directly in terms of fermionic degrees of freedom. At the same time, the constrained fermions description introduces some subtleties concerning gauge anomalies since it involves the coupling of chiral fermions to gauge fields. We describe in this article how to handle these issues.