Frustrated Kondo impurity triangle: A simple model of deconfinement

Concepts of topological order are central to our understanding of strongly correlated quantum materials. In this work, the authors propose that such concepts -- which transcend the Landau paradigm -- also appear in frustrated impurity models. In particular, they show that a variety of defining characteristics of topological order appear in a frustrated Kondo triangle: an irrational ground-state degeneracy reminiscent of anyons, ordering of a Wilson-loop-like order parameter, and a phase transition driven by the proliferation of monopoles of an emergent gauge field.