No Arabic abstract
We show that a tetragonal lattice of weakly interacting cavities with uniaxial electromagnetic response is the photonic counterpart of topological crystalline insulators, a new topological phase of atomic band insulators. Namely, the frequency band structure stemming from the interaction of resonant modes of the individual cavities exhibits an omnidirectional band gap within which gapless surface states emerge for finite slabs of the lattice. Due to the equivalence of a topological crystalline insulator with its photonic-crystal analog, the frequency band structure of the latter can be characterized by a $Z_{2}$ topological invariant. Such a topological photonic crystal can be realized in the microwave regime as a three-dimensional lattice of dielectric particles embedded within a continuous network of thin metallic wires.
We study topological crystalline insulators doped with magnetic impurities, in which ferromagnetism at the surface lowers the electronic energy by spontaneous breaking of a crystalline symmetry. The number of energetically equivalent ground states is sensitive to the crystalline symmetry of the surface, as well as the precise density of electrons at the surface. We show that for a SnTe model in the topological state, magnetic states can have twofold symmetry, sixfold symmetry, or eightfold degenerate minima. We compute spin stiffnesses within the model to demonstrate the stability of ferromagnetic states, and consider their ramifications for thermal disordering. Possible experimental consequences of the surface magnetism are discussed.
The surface states of 3D topological insulators can exhibit Fermi surfaces of arbitrary area when the chemical potential is tuned away from the Dirac points. We focus on topological Kondo insulators and show that the surface states can acquire a finite Fermi surface even when the chemical potential is pinned to the Dirac point energy. We illustrate how this can occur when the crystal symmetry is lowered from cubic to tetragonal in a minimal two-orbital model. We label such surface modes as `shadow surface states. We also show that for certain bulk hybridization the Fermi surface of the shadow states can become comparable to the extremal area of the unhybridized bulk bands. The `large Fermi surface of the shadow states is expected to lead to large-frequency quantum oscillations in the presence of an applied magnetic field. Consequently, shadow surface states provide an alternative to mechanisms involving bulk Landau-quantized levels or surface Kondo breakdown for anomalous magnetic quantum oscillations in topological Kondo insulators with tetragonal crystal symmetry.
We study the properties of a family of anti-pervoskite materials, which are topological crystalline insulators with an insulating bulk but a conducting surface. Using ab-initio DFT calculations, we investigate the bulk and surface topology and show that these materials exhibit type-I as well as type-II Dirac surface states protected by reflection symmetry. While type-I Dirac states give rise to closed circular Fermi surfaces, type-II Dirac surface states are characterized by open electron and hole pockets that touch each other. We find that the type-II Dirac states exhibit characteristic van-Hove singularities in their dispersion, which can serve as an experimental fingerprint. In addition, we study the response of the surface states to magnetic fields.
We numerically investigate the surface states of a strong topological insulator in the presence of strong electron-electron interactions. We choose a spherical topological insulator geometry to make the surface amenable to a finite size analysis. The single-particle problem maps to that of Landau orbitals on the sphere with a magnetic monopole at the center that has unit strength and opposite sign for electrons with opposite spin. Assuming density-density contact interactions, we find superconducting and anomalous (quantum) Hall phases for attractive and repulsive interactions, respectively, as well as chiral fermion and chiral Majorana fermion boundary modes between different phases. Our setup is preeminently adapted to the search for topologically ordered surface terminations that could be microscopically stabilized by tailored surface interaction profiles.
We construct the symmetric-gapped surface states of a fractional topological insulator with electromagnetic $theta$-angle $theta_{em} = frac{pi}{3}$ and a discrete $mathbb{Z}_3$ gauge field. They are the proper generalizations of the T-pfaffian state and pfaffian/anti-semion state and feature an extended periodicity compared with their of integer topological band insulators counterparts. We demonstrate that the surface states have the correct anomalies associated with time-reversal symmetry and charge conservation.