Abe homotopy classification of topological excitations under the topological influence of vortices

Abstract

Topological excitations are usually classified by the nth homotopy group π n . However, for topological excitations that coexist with vortices, there are cases in which an element of π n cannot properly describe the charge of a topological excitation due to the influence of the vortices. This is because an element of π n corresponding to the charge of a topological excitation may change when the topological excitation circumnavigates a vortex. This phenomenon is referred to as the action of π 1 on π n . In this paper, we show that topological excitations coexisting with vortices are classified by the Abe homotopy group κ n . The nth Abe homotopy group κ n is defined as a semi-direct product of π 1 and π n . In this framework, the action of π 1 on π n is understood as originating from noncommutativity between π 1 and π n . We show that a physical charge of a topological excitation can be described in terms of the conjugacy class of the Abe homotopy group. Moreover, the Abe homotopy group naturally describes vortex-pair creation and annihilation processes, which also influence topological excitations. We calculate the influence of vortices on topological excitations for the case in which the order parameter manifold is S n / K , where S n is an n-dimensional sphere and K is a discrete subgroup of SO ( n + 1 ) . We show that the influence of vortices on a topological excitation exists only if n is even and K includes a nontrivial element of O ( n ) / SO ( n ) .