Assembling Fibonacci anyons from a ℤ_3 parafermion lattice model

Recent concrete proposals suggest it is possible to engineer a two-dimensional bulk phase supporting non-Abelian Fibonacci anyons out of Abelian fractional quantum Hall systems. The low-energy degrees of freedom of such setups can be modeled as ℤ_3 parafermions “hopping” on a two-dimensional lattice. We use the density matrix renormalization group to study a model of this type interpolating between the decoupled-chain, triangular-lattice, and square-lattice limits. The results show clear evidence of the Fibonacci phase over a wide region of the phase diagram, most notably including the isotropic triangular-lattice point. We also study the broader phase diagram of this model and show that elsewhere it supports an Abelian state with semionic excitations