The University of Tokyo · Physics and Astronomy
Professor Linhao Li's research focuses on symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases, particularly in gapless and strongly correlated quantum systems. His work explores nonunitary duality transformations—such as the generalized Kennedy-Tasaki transform—to construct and classify SPT phases, including intrinsically gapless topological states. He employs advanced field-theoretic methods, including conformal field theory and decorated defect constructions, to understand topological invariants, boundary modes, and anomalies in quantum many-body systems. His group bridges condensed matter theory with quantum information concepts, emphasizing the interplay between symmetry, topology, and quantum criticality.
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In 1992, Kennedy and Tasaki constructed a nonlocal unitary transformation that maps between a ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ spontaneously symmetry breaking phase and the Haldane gap phase, which is a prototypical symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase in modern framework, on an open spin chain. In this work, we propose a way to define it on a closed chain by sacrificing unitarity. The operator realizing such a nonunitary transformation satisfies noninve
Symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases are one of the simplest, yet nontrivial, gapped systems that go beyond the Landau paradigm. In this work, we study an extension of the notion of SPT for gapless systems, namely, gapless symmetry protected topological states. We construct several simple gapless-SPT models using the decorated defect construction, which allow analytical understanding of non-trivial topological features including the symmetry charge under twisted boundary conditions, and b
The Kennedy-Tasaki (KT) transformation was used to construct the gapped symmetry protected topological (SPT) phase from the symmetry breaking phase with open boundary condition, and was generalized in our proceeding work [Phys. Rev. B 108, 214429 (2023)] on a ring by sacrificing the unitarity, and should be understood as a non-invertible duality transformation. In this work, we further apply the KT transformation to systematically construct gapless symmetry protected topological phases. This con
Symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases are one of the simplest, yet nontrivial, gapped systems that go beyond the Landau paradigm. In this work, we study an extension of the notion of SPT for gapless systems, namely, gapless symmetry protected topological states. We construct several simple gapless-SPT models using the decorated defect construction, which allow analytical understanding of non-trivial topological features including the symmetry charge under twisted boundary conditions, and b
We study a relationship between conformally invariant boundary conditions and anomalies of conformal field theories (CFTs) in $1+1$ dimensions. For a given CFT with a global symmetry, we consider symmetric ``gapping potentials'', which are relevant perturbations to the CFT. If a gapping potential is introduced only in a subregion of the system, it provides a certain boundary condition to the CFT. From this equivalence, if there exists a Cardy boundary state, which is invariant under a symmetry,
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