Topological electromagnetic responses of bosonic quantum Hall, topological insulator, and chiral semimetal phases in all dimensions

Abstract

We calculate the topological part of the electromagnetic response of Bosonic Integer Quantum Hall (BIQH) phases in odd (spacetime) dimensions, and Bosonic Topological Insulator (BTI) and Bosonic chiral semi-metal (BCSM) phases in even dimensions. To do this we use the Nonlinear Sigma Model (NLSM) description of bosonic symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases, and the method of gauged Wess-Zumino (WZ) actions. We find the surprising result that for BIQH states in dimension $2m-1$ ($m=1,2,\dots$), the bulk response to an electromagnetic field $A_{\mu}$ is characterized by a Chern-Simons term for $A_{\mu}$ with a level quantized in integer multiples of $m!$ (factorial). We also show that BTI states (which have an extra $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry) can exhibit a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ breaking Quantum Hall effect on their boundaries, with this boundary Quantum Hall effect described by a Chern-Simons term at level $\frac{m!}{2}$. We show that the factor of $m!$ can be understood by requiring gauge invariance of the exponential of the Chern-Simons term on a general Euclidean manifold, and we also use this argument to characterize the electromagnetic and gravitational responses of fermionic SPT phases with $U(1)$ symmetry in all odd dimensions. We then use our gauged boundary actions for the BIQH and BTI states to (i) construct a bosonic analogue of a chiral semi-metal (BCSM) in even dimensions, (ii) show that the boundary of the BTI state exhibits a bosonic analogue of the parity anomaly of Dirac fermions in odd dimensions, and (iii) study anomaly inflow at domain walls on the boundary of BTI states. In a series of Appendices we derive important formulas and additional results. In particular, in Appendix A we use the connection between equivariant cohomology and gauged WZ actions to give a mathematical interpretation of the actions for the BIQH and BTI boundaries constructed in this paper.