2,330 research outputs found
Anatomy of Topological Surface States: Exact Solutions from Destructive Interference on Frustrated Lattices
The hallmark of topological phases is their robust boundary signature whose
intriguing properties---such as the one-way transport on the chiral edge of a
Chern insulator and the sudden disappearance of surface states forming open
Fermi arcs on the surfaces of Weyl semimetals---are impossible to realize on
the surface alone. Yet, despite the glaring simplicity of non-interacting
topological bulk Hamiltonians and their concomitant energy spectrum, the
detailed study of the corresponding surface states has essentially been
restricted to numerical simulation. In this work, however, we show that exact
analytical solutions of both topological and trivial surface states can be
obtained for generic tight-binding models on a large class of geometrically
frustrated lattices in any dimension without the need for fine-tuning of
hopping amplitudes. Our solutions derive from local constraints tantamount to
destructive interference between neighboring layer lattices perpendicular to
the surface and provide microscopic insights into the structure of the surface
states that enable analytical calculation of many desired properties. We
illustrate our general findings on a large number of examples in two and three
spatial dimensions. Notably, we derive exact chiral Chern insulator edge states
on the spin orbit-coupled kagome lattice, and Fermi arcs relevant for various
recently synthesized pyrochlore iridate slabs. Remarkably, each of the
pyrochlore slabs exhibit Fermi arcs although only the ones with a magnetic
one-in-three-out configuration feature bulk Weyl nodes in realistic parameter
regimes. Our approach furthermore signal the absence of topological surface
states, which we illustrate for a class of models akin to the trivial surface
of Hourglass materials KHg.Comment: 24 pages, 17 figure
Effect of Strong Disorder in a 3-Dimensional Topological Insulator: Phase Diagram and Maps of the Z2 Invariant
We study the effect of strong disorder in a 3-dimensional topological
insulators with time-reversal symmetry and broken inversion symmetry. Firstly,
using level statistics analysis, we demonstrate the persistence of delocalized
bulk states even at large disorder. The delocalized spectrum is seen to display
the levitation and pair annihilation effect, indicating that the delocalized
states continue to carry the Z2 invariant after the onset of disorder.
Secondly, the Z2 invariant is computed via twisted boundary conditions using an
efficient numerical algorithm. We demonstrate that the Z2 invariant remains
quantized and non-fluctuating even after the spectral gap becomes filled with
dense localized states. In fact, our results indicate that the Z2 invariant
remains quantized until the mobility gap closes or until the Fermi level
touches the mobility edges. Based on such data, we compute the phase diagram of
the Bi2Se3 topological material as function of disorder strength and position
of the Fermi level.Comment: references added; final versio
Extended Bloch theorem for topological lattice models with open boundaries
While the Bloch spectrum of translationally invariant noninteracting lattice
models is trivially obtained by a Fourier transformation, diagonalizing the
same problem in the presence of open boundary conditions is typically only
possible numerically or in idealized limits. Here we present exact analytic
solutions for the boundary states in a number of lattice models of current
interest, including nodal-line semimetals on a hyperhoneycomb lattice,
spin-orbit coupled graphene, and three-dimensional topological insulators on a
diamond lattice, for which no previous exact finite-size solutions are
available in the literature. Furthermore, we identify spectral mirror symmetry
as the key criterium for analytically obtaining the entire (bulk and boundary)
spectrum as well as the concomitant eigenstates, and exemplify this for Chern
and insulators with open boundaries of co-dimension one. In the
case of the two-dimensional Lieb lattice, we extend this further and show how
to analytically obtain the entire spectrum in the presence of open boundaries
in both directions, where it has a clear interpretation in terms of bulk, edge,
and corner states
Boundaries of boundaries: a systematic approach to lattice models with solvable boundary states of arbitrary codimension
We present a generic and systematic approach for constructing D-dimensional
lattice models with exactly solvable d-dimensional boundary states localized to
corners, edges, hinges and surfaces. These solvable models represent a class of
"sweet spots" in the space of possible tight-binding models---the exact
solutions remain valid for any tight-binding parameters as long as they obey
simple locality conditions that are manifest in the underlying lattice
structure. Consequently, our models capture the physics of both (higher-order)
topological and non-topological phases as well as the transitions between them
in a particularly illuminating and transparent manner.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figure
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