Universal symmetry-protected topological invariants for symmetry-protected topological states

Abstract

Symmetry-protected topological (SPT) states are short-range entangled states with a symmetry $G$. They belong to a new class of quantum states of matter which are classified by the group cohomology ${\mathcal{H}}^{d+1}(G,\mathbb{R}/\mathbb{Z})$ in $d$-dimensional space. In this paper, we propose a class of symmetry-protected topological invariants that may allow us to fully characterize SPT states with a symmetry group $G$ [i.e., allow us to measure the cocycles in ${\mathcal{H}}^{d+1}(G,\mathbb{R}/\mathbb{Z})$ that characterize the SPT states]. We give an explicit and detailed construction of symmetry-protected topological invariants for $2+1$D SPT states. Such a construction can be directly generalized to other dimensions.