Flat bands and band-touching from real-space topology in hyperbolic lattices

Motivated by the recent experimental realizations of hyperbolic lattices in circuit quantum electrodynamics and in classical electric-circuit networks, we study flat bands and band-touching phenomena in such lattices. We analyze noninteracting nearest-neighbor hopping models on hyperbolic analogs of the kagome and dice lattices with heptagonal and octagonal symmetries. We show that two characteristic features of the energy spectrum of those models, namely, the fraction of states in the flat band as well as the number of touching points between the flat band and the dispersive bands, can both be captured exactly by a combination of real-space topology arguments and a reciprocal-space description via the formalism of hyperbolic band theory. Furthermore, using real-space numerical diagonalization on finite lattices with periodic boundary conditions, we obtain insights into higher-dimensional irreducible representations of the non-Euclidean (Fuchsian) translation group of hyperbolic lattices. First, we find that the fraction of states in the flat band is the same for Abelian and non-Abelian hyperbolic Bloch states. Second, we find that only Abelian states participate in the formation of touching points between the flat and dispersive bands

Non-Abelian band topology in noninteracting metals

Electron energy bands of crystalline solids generically exhibit degeneracies called band-structure nodes. Here, we introduce non-Abelian topological charges that characterize line nodes inside the momentum space of crystalline metals with space-time inversion (pt) symmetry and with weak spin-orbit coupling. We show that these are quaternion charges, similar to those describing disclinations in biaxial nematics. Starting from two-band considerations, we develop the complete many-band description of nodes in the presence of (pt) and mirror symmetries, which allows us to investigate the topological stability of nodal chains in metals. The non-Abelian charges put strict constraints on the possible nodal-line configurations. Our analysis goes beyond the standard approach to band topology and implies the existence of one-dimensional topological phases not present in existing classifications

Non-Abelian band topology in noninteracting metals

Electron energy bands of crystalline solids generically exhibit degeneracies called band-structure nodes. Here, we introduce non-Abelian topological charges that characterize line nodes inside the momentum space of crystalline metals with space-time inversion ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetry and with weak spinorbit coupling. We show that these are quaternion charges, similar to those describing disclinations in biaxial nematics. Starting from two-band considerations, we develop the complete many-band description of nodes in the presence of $\mathcal{PT}$ and mirror symmetries, which allows us to investigate the topological stability of nodal chains in metals. The non-Abelian charges put strict constraints on the possible nodal-line configurations. Our analysis goes beyond the standard approach to band topology and implies the existence of one-dimensional topological phases not present in existing classifications.Comment: Main text: 6 pages with 4 figures. Supplemental Material: 29 pages with 24 figures. Submitted to journal on 27 July 201

Delicate topology protected by rotation symmetry: Crystalline Hopf insulators and beyond

Pontrjagin's seminal topological classification of two-band Hamiltonians in three momentum dimensions is hereby enriched with the inclusion of crystallographic rotational symmetry. The enrichment is attributed to a new topological invariant which quantifies a 2π-quantized change in the Berry-Zak phase between a pair of rotation-invariant lines in the bulk, three-dimensional Brillouin zone; because this change is reversed on the complementary section of the Brillouin zone, we refer to this new invariant as a returning Thouless pump (RTP). We find that the RTP is associated with anomalous values for the angular momentum of surface states, which guarantees metallic in-gap states for open boundary conditions with sharply terminated hoppings; more generally for arbitrarily terminated hoppings, surface states are characterized by Berry-Zak phases that are quantized to a rational multiple of 2π. The RTP adds to the family of topological invariants (the Hopf and Chern numbers) that are known to classify two-band Hamiltonians in Wigner-Dyson symmetry class A. Of these, the RTP and Hopf invariants are delicate, meaning that they can be trivialized by adding a particular trivial band to either the valence or the conduction subspace. Not all trivial band additions will nullify the RTP invariant, which allows its generalization beyond two-band Hamiltonians to arbitrarily many bands; such generalization is a hallmark of symmetry-protected delicate topology