Microscopic diagnosis of universal geometric responses in fractional quantum Hall liquids

Abstract

Topological quantum liquids contain internal degrees of freedom that are coupled to geometric response. Yet, an explicit and microscopic identification of geometric response remains difficult. Here, taking notable fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states as typical examples, we systematically investigate a promising protocol – the Dehn twist deformation on the torus geometry, to probe the geometric response of correlated topological states and establish the relation between such response and the universal properties of pertinent states. Based on analytical derivations and numerical simulations, we find that the geometry-induced Berry phase encodes novel features for a broad class of FQH states at the Laughlin, hierarchy, Halperin and non-Abelian Moore- Read fillings. Our findings conclusively demonstrate that the adiabatic Dehn twist deformation can faithfully capture the geometry of elementary FQH droplets and intrinsic modular information including topological spin and chiral central charge. Our approach provides a powerful way to reveal topological orders of generic FQH states and allows us to address previously open questions.