SU(3) trimer resonating-valence-bond state on the square lattice

Abstract: We propose and study an SU(3) trimer resonating-valence-bond (tRVB) state with $C_{4v}$ point-group symmetry on the square lattice. By devising a projected entangled-pair state representation, we show that all (connected) correlation functions between local operators in this SU(3) tRVB state decay exponentially, indicating its gapped nature. We further calculate the modular $S$ and $T$ matrices by constructing all nine topological sectors on a torus and establish the existence of $\mathbb{Z}_3$ topological order in this SU(3) tRVB state.