Anyons in discrete gauge theories with Chern-Simons terms

Abstract

A gauge theory with a discrete group H in (2 + 1)-dimensional space-time is known to describe (non-abelian) anyons. We study the effect of adding a Chern-Simons term to such a theory. As in a previous paper, we emphasize the algebraic structure underlying a discrete H gauge theory, namely the Hopf algebra D(H). For H ⋍ Z N , we argue on physical grounds that a Chern-Simons term in the action leads to a non-trivial 3-cocycle on D(H). Accordingly, the physically inequivalent models are labeled by the elements of the cohomology group H 3(H, U(1)). It depends periodically on the coefficient of the Chern-Simons term which model is realized. This establishes a relation with the discrete topological field theories of Dijkgraaf and Witten. We extrapolate these results to non-abelian H, and work out the representative example H ⋍ D 2 .