22 research outputs found
Wallpaper Fermions and the Nonsymmorphic Dirac Insulator
Recent developments in the relationship between bulk topology and surface
crystal symmetry have led to the discovery of materials whose gapless surface
states are protected by crystal symmetries. In fact, there exists only a very
limited set of possible surface crystal symmetries, captured by the 17
"wallpaper groups." We show that a consideration of symmetry-allowed band
degeneracies in the wallpaper groups can be used to understand previous
topological crystalline insulators, as well as to predict new examples. In
particular, the two wallpaper groups with multiple glide lines, and
, allow for a new topological insulating phase, whose surface spectrum
consists of only a single, fourfold-degenerate, true Dirac fermion. Like the
surface state of a conventional topological insulator, the surface Dirac
fermion in this "nonsymmorphic Dirac insulator" provides a theoretical
exception to a fermion doubling theorem. Unlike the surface state of a
conventional topological insulator, it can be gapped into topologically
distinct surface regions while keeping time-reversal symmetry, allowing for
networks of topological surface quantum spin Hall domain walls. We report the
theoretical discovery of new topological crystalline phases in the AB
family of materials in SG 127, finding that SrPb hosts this new
topological surface Dirac fermion. Furthermore, (100)-strained AuY and
HgSr host related topological surface hourglass fermions. We also
report the presence of this new topological hourglass phase in
BaInSb in SG 55. For orthorhombic space groups with two glides, we
catalog all possible bulk topological phases by a consideration of the allowed
non-abelian Wilson loop connectivities, and we develop topological invariants
for these systems. Finally, we show how in a particular limit, these
crystalline phases reduce to copies of the SSH model.Comment: Final version, 6 pg main text + 29 pg supplement, 6 + 13 figure