Diagnosing 2D symmetry protected topological states via mixed state anomaly

Abstract

Symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases are short-range entangled quantum states characterized by anomalous edge behavior, a manifestation of the bulk-boundary correspondence for topological phases. Moreover, the Li-Haldane conjecture posits that the entanglement spectrum exhibits the same anomaly as the physical edge spectrum, thereby serving as an entanglement-based fingerprint for identifying topological phases. In this work, we extend the entanglement-based diagnostic tools by demonstrating that the edge anomaly is manifested not only in the entanglement spectrum but also in the reduced density matrix itself, a phenomenon we refer to as the mixed state anomaly. Focusing on the two-dimensional $\mathbb{Z}_2$ SPT phase, we show that this anomaly is subtly encoded in symmetry-twisted mixed states, leading to a topological contribution to the disorder parameter beyond the area law, as well as a spontaneous-symmetry-breaking type long-range order when time reversal symmetry is present.