No Arabic abstract
A topological pump enables robust transport of quantized particles when the system parameters are varied in a cyclic process. In previous studies, topological pump was achieved inhomogeneous systems guaranteed by a topological invariant of the bulk band structure when time is included as an additional synthetic dimension. Recently, bulk-boundary correspondence has been generalized to the bulk-disclination correspondence, describing the emergence of topological bounded states in the crystallographic defects protected by the bulk topology. Here we show the topological pumping can happen between different disclination states with different chiralities in an inhomogeneous structure. Based on a generalized understanding of the charge pumping process, we explain the topological disclination pump by tracing the motion of Wannier centers in each unit cell. Besides, by constructing two disclination structures and introducing a symmetry-breaking perturbation, we achieve a topological pumping between different dislocation cores. Our result opens a route to study the topological pumping in inhomogeneous topological crystalline systems and provides a flexible platform for robust energy transport.
We explore adiabatic pumping in the presence of periodic drive, finding a new phase in which the topologically quantized pumped quantity is energy rather than charge. The topological invariant is given by the winding number of the micromotion with respect to time within each cycle, momentum, and adiabatic tuning parameter. We show numerically that this pump is highly robust against both disorder and interactions, breaking down at large values of either in a manner identical to the Thouless charge pump. Finally, we suggest experimental protocols for measuring this phenomenon.
A seminal gedankenexperiment by Laughlin describes the charge transport in quantum Hall systems via the pumping of flux. Here, we propose an optical scheme which probes and manipulates quantum Hall systems in a similar way: When light containing orbital angular momentum interacts with electronic Landau levels, it acts as a flux pump which radially moves the electrons through the sample. We investigate this effect for a graphene system with Corbino geometry, and calculate the radial current in the absence of any electric potential bias. Remarkably, the current is robust against the disorder which is consistent with the lattice symmetry, and in the weak excitation limit, the current shows a power-law scaling with intensity characterized by the novel exponent 2/3.
Robust fractional charge localized at disclination defects has been recently found as a topological response in $C_{6}$ symmetric 2D topological crystalline insulators (TCIs). In this article, we thoroughly investigate the fractional charge on disclinations in $C_n$ symmetric TCIs, with or without time reversal symmetry, and including spinless and spin-$frac{1}{2}$ cases. We compute the fractional disclination charges from the Wannier representations in real space and use band representation theory to construct topological indices of the fractional disclination charge for all $2D$ TCIs that admit a (generalized) Wannier representation. We find the disclination charge is fractionalized in units of $frac{e}{n}$ for $C_n$ symmetric TCIs; and for spin-$frac{1}{2}$ TCIs, with additional time reversal symmetry, the disclination charge is fractionalized in units of $frac{2e}{n}$. We furthermore prove that with electron-electron interactions that preserve the $C_n$ symmetry and many-body bulk gap, though we can deform a TCI into another which is topologically distinct in the free fermion case, the fractional disclination charge determined by our topological indices will not change in this process. Moreover, we use an algebraic technique to generalize the indices for TCIs with non-zero Chern numbers, where a Wannier representation is not applicable. With the inclusion of the Chern number, our generalized fractional disclination indices apply for all $C_n$ symmetric TCIs. Finally, we briefly discuss the connection between the Chern number dependence of our generalized indices and the Wen-Zee term.
The recently discovered three dimensional or bulk topological insulators are expected to exhibit exotic quantum phenomena. It is believed that a trivial insulator can be twisted into a topological state by modulating the spin-orbit interaction or the crystal lattice via odd number of band
We investigate the fate of topological states on fractal lattices. Focusing on a spinless chiral p-wave paired superconductor, we find that this model supports two qualitatively distinct phases when defined on a Sierpinski gasket. While the trivial phase is characterized by a self-similar spectrum with infinitely many gaps and extended eigenstates, the novel topological phase has a gapless spectrum and hosts chiral states propagating along edges of the graph. Besides employing theoretical probes such as the real-space Chern number, inverse participation ratio, and energy-level statistics in the presence of disorder, we develop a simple physical picture capturing the essential features of the model on the gasket. Extending this picture to other fractal lattices and topological states, we show that the p+ip state admits a gapped topological phase on the Sierpinski carpet and that a higher-order topological insulator placed on this lattice hosts gapless modes localized on corners.