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$X$.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 $\mathcal Z_2$ 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