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The second law of thermodynamics points to the existence of an `arrow of time, along which entropy only increases. This arises despite the time-reversal symmetry (TRS) of the microscopic laws of nature. Within quantum theory, TRS underpins many interesting phenomena, most notably topological insulators and the Haldane phase of quantum magnets. Here, we demonstrate that such TRS-protected effects are fundamentally unstable against coupling to an environment. Irrespective of the microscopic symmetries, interactions between a quantum system and its surroundings facilitate processes which would be forbidden by TRS in an isolated system. This leads not only to entanglement entropy production and the emergence of macroscopic irreversibility, but also to the demise of TRS-protected phenomena, including those associated with certain symmetry-protected topological phases. Our results highlight the enigmatic nature of TRS in quantum mechanics, and elucidate potential challenges in utilising topological systems for quantum technologies.
We study classification of interacting fermionic symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases with both rotation symmetry and Abelian internal symmetries in one, two, and three dimensions. By working out this classification, on the one hand, we demons
Universal driving protocol for symmetry-protected Floquet topological phasesWe propose a universal driving protocol for the realization of symmetry-protected topological phases in $2+1$ dimensional Floquet systems. Our proposal is based on the theore
Recent study predicts that structural disorder, serving as a bridge connecting a crystalline material to an amorphous material, can induce a topological insulator from a trivial phase. However, to experimentally observe such a topological phase trans
Topological phenomena are commonly studied in phases of matter which are separated from a trivial phase by an unavoidable quantum phase transition. This can be overly restrictive, leaving out scenarios of practical relevance -- similar to the distinc
The construction and classification of symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases in interacting bosonic and fermionic systems have been intensively studied in the past few years. Very recently, a complete classification and construction of space gr