Topological insulators are characterized by the presence of gapless surface modes protected by time-reversal symmetry. In three space dimensions the magnetoelectric response is described in terms of a bulk $\ensuremath{\theta}$ term for the electromagnetic field. Here we construct theoretical examples of such phases that cannot be smoothly connected to any band insulator. Such correlated topological insulators admit the possibility of fractional magnetoelectric response described by fractional $\ensuremath{\theta}/\ensuremath{\pi}$. We show that fractional $\ensuremath{\theta}/\ensuremath{\pi}$ is only possible in a gapped time-reversal-invariant system of bosons or fermions if the system also has deconfined fractional excitations and associated degenerate ground states on topologically nontrivial spaces. We illustrate this result with a concrete example of a time-reversal-symmetric topological insulator of correlated bosons with $\ensuremath{\theta}=\frac{\ensuremath{\pi}}{4}$. Extensions to electronic fractional topological insulators are briefly described.
Topological insulators are characterized by the presence of gapless surface modes protected by time-reversal symmetry. In three space dimensions the magnetoelectric response is described in terms of a bulk \ensuremathθ term for the electromagnetic field. Here we construct theoretical examples of such phases that cannot be smoothly connected to any band insulator. Such correlated topological insulators admit the possibility of fractional magnetoelectric response described by fractional \ensuremathθ/\ensuremathπ. We show that fractional \ensuremathθ/\ensuremathπ is only possible in a gapped time-reversal-invariant system of bosons or fermions if the system also has deconfined fractional excitations and associated degenerate ground states on topologically nontrivial spaces. We illustrate this result with a concrete example of a time-reversal-symmetric topological insulator of correlated bosons with \ensuremathθ=4\ensuremathπ. Extensions to electronic fractional topological insulators are briefly described.
Time-reversal invariant three-dimensional topological insulators can be defined fundamentally by a topological field theory with a quantized axion angle $\ensuremath{\theta}$ of 0 or $\ensuremath{\pi}$. It was recently shown that fractional quantized values of $\ensuremath{\theta}$ are consistent with time-reversal invariance if deconfined, gapped, fractionally charged bulk excitations appear in the low-energy spectrum due to strong correlation effects, leading to the concept of a fractional topological insulator. These fractionally charged excitations are coupled to emergent gauge fields, which ensure that the microscopic degrees of freedom, the original electrons, are gauge-invariant objects. A first step towards the construction of microscopic models of fractional topological insulators is to understand the nature of these emergent gauge theories and their corresponding phases. In this work, we show that low-energy effective gauge theories of both Abelian or non-Abelian type are consistent with a fractional quantized axion angle if they admit a Coulomb phase or a Higgs phase with gauge group broken down to a discrete subgroup. The Coulomb phases support gapless but electrically neutral bulk excitations while the Higgs phases are fully gapped. The Higgs and non-Abelian Coulomb phases exhibit multiple ground states on boundaryless spatial three-manifolds with nontrivial first homology, while the Abelian Coulomb phase has a unique ground state. The ground-state degeneracy receives an additional contribution on manifolds with boundary due to the induced boundary Chern-Simons term.
We construct exactly soluble lattice models for fractionalized, time-reversal-invariant electronic insulators in two and three dimensions. The low-energy physics of these models is exactly equivalent to a noninteracting topological insulator built out of fractionally charged fermionic quasiparticles. We show that some of our models have protected edge modes [in two dimensions (2D)] and surface modes (in 3D), and are thus fractionalized analogs of topological insulators. We also find that some of the 2D models do not have protected edge modes; that is, the edge modes can be gapped out by appropriate time-reversal-invariant, charge-conserving perturbations. (A similar state of affairs may also exist in 3D.) We show that all of our models are topologically ordered, exhibiting fractional statistics as well as ground-state degeneracy on a torus. In the 3D case, we find that the models exhibit a fractional magnetoelectric effect.
Topological order provides a new paradigm to view phases of matter. Unlike conventional symmetry breaking order, these states are not distinguished by different patterns of symmetry breaking, instead by their intricate mathematical structure, topology. By the bulk-boundary correspondence, the nontrivial topology of the bulk results in robust gapless excitations on symmetry preserving surfaces. We utilize both of these views to study topological phases together with the analysis of their quantized physical responses to perturbations.First we study the edge excitations of strongly interacting abelian fractional quantum Hall liquids on an infinite strip geometry. We use the infinite density matrix renormalization group method to numerically measure edge exponents in model systems, including subleading orders. Using analytic methods we derive a generalized Luttinger's theorem that relates momenta of edge excitations.Next we consider topological crystalline insulators protected by space group symmetry. After reviewing the general formalism, we present results about the quantization of the magnetoelectric response protected by orientation-reversing space group symmetries. We construct and analyze insulating and superconducting tight-binding models with glide symmetry in three dimensions to illustrate the general result. Following this, we derive constraints on weak indices of three dimensional topological insulators imposed by space group symmetries. We focus on spin-orbit coupled insulators with and without time reversal invariance and consider both symmorphic and nonsymmorphic symmetries.Finally, we calculate the response of metals and generalize the notion of the magnetoelectric effect to noninteracting gapless systems. We use semiclassical dynamics to study the magnetopiezoelectric effect, the current response to elastic strain in static external magnetic fields.
Topological phases of matter are purely quantum mechanical and have no classical analogue. Most phases in nature can be classified and studied classically through the concept of symmetry breaking and its theoretical description, Landau-Ginzburg field theory. In contrast to the general wisdom of Landau-Ginzburg field theory, the topological phases share the same symmetry as a trivial insulator and still are different phases. Having gapped spectrum in bulk, they support a metallic edge excition robust against symmetry-respecting perturbation or an emergent fractional excitation in bulk. Following after fractional quantum Hall fluids, many topologically orderd phases, such as spin liquids and topological insulators, have been found and studied. Spin liquids are disordered phases of frustrated antiferromagnets and do not freeze and order even at the lowest temperature. They support an electrically neutral spin-1/2 excitation, which does not exist in a microscopic scale, with emergent dynamical gauge field in bulk and do not have an adiabatic path to a trivial paramagnet phase. The topological insulators are time-reversal symmetric band insulators which cannot evolve smoothly into a trivial insulator with the symmetry, and they have been intensely studied theoretically and experimetally for the last decade. Though the topological insulators are inherently non-interacting systems, they have exotic gapless edge and surface states which demonstrate many interesting quantum phenomena such as fractionalization, axionic electromagnetism, and half quantum Hall effect. In this thesis, we study various quantum phenomena of the topological phases, mainly of the topological insulator and its close relatives in which the physics of spin liquids has been merged into. As they are intrinsically quantum many-body states, the quantum field theory is an invaluable tool to explore the venue of the phases and will be used thorougly in this work. First, we present a topological field theoretic description of the topological insulators and translational symmetric Z2 spin liquid. We demostrate that abelian BF theory is an effective field theory for the two and three dimensional topological insulators. We show that the phenomenologies of BF theory are consistent with those of the topological insulators such as gapless edge and surface excitations and response functions to external gauge field. The same form of the BF theory is also applicable to study the certain classes of Z2 spin liquids with the gapless edge states. We closely examine the possible gapless edge theory of the BF theory and the translational symmetric spin liquids, and we show that the effective BF theories capture the bulk properties as well as the gapless edge spectrum of the spin liquid. Also we discuss the zero-temperature phase diagram of a thin film three dimensional topological insulators with two competing mass terms: time-reversal symmetric exciton condensation and time-reversal symmetry breaking Zeeman effect. There are two phases, quantum spin Hall phase and quantum anomalous Hall phase, and both phases support fractional excitations. We derive an effective topological field theory for the fractional excitations and examine the origin of the fractional excitations. Next we consider the relatives of the topological insulators. First we discuss the proximate symmetry broken phases of topological Mott insulator, a U(1) spin liquid with fermionic spinons in the topological insulator state. The topologically non-trivial band structure of the spinon generates the axion term for the gauge field, and we show that the axion term changes the nature of the confined phase of the spin liquid. Contrast to the conventional confined phase which has only a bond order, the confined phase of the spin liquid is in general a coexisting phase of the two different orders : a current order and a bond order. We then consider another relative of the topological insulator: a bosonic symmetry protected topological phase in two dimensional space, with both PSU(N) and time reversal symmetry. We develop an effective field theory for the phase, which is a SU(N) principal chiral model with a theta-term, and reveal the physics of the topological phase in detail.Finally we consider a topological semimetal, namely a Weyl semimetal. We first demonstrate that the Weyl semimetal can be realized in the magnetically doped topological band insulators. We explicitly derive the low energy theory of Weyl points from the general continuum Hamiltonian and tight-binding model of the topological insulators. Then we study superconducting instabilities of doped Weyl semimetals. We consider a minimal model for a Weyl semimetal and study the superconducting instabilities induced by a short-ranged attractive interaction. With the interaction, we find two competing states: a fully gapped finite-momentum pairing state and a nodal even-parity pairing state. We show that, in a mean field approximateion, the finite-momentum pairing state wins energetically against the usual even-parity paired state. We also show that exotic modes are localized at the full and half quantum vortices of the finite-momentum pairing state.
Motivated by experimental progress in the growth of heavy transition metal oxides, we theoretically study a class of lattice models of interacting fermions with strong spin-orbit coupling. Focusing on interactions of intermediate strength, we derive a low-energy effective field theory for a fully gapped, topologically ordered, fractionalized state with an eightfold ground-state degeneracy. This state is a fermionic symmetry-enriched topological phase with particle-number conservation and time-reversal symmetry. The topological terms in the effective field theory describe a quantized magnetoelectric response and nontrivial mutual braiding statistics of dynamical extended vortex loops with emergent fermions in the bulk. We explicitly compute the expected mutual statistics in a specific model on the pyrochlore lattice within a slave-particle mean-field theory. We argue that our model also provides a possible condensed-matter realization of oblique confinement.
We analyze translationally invariant insulators with inversion symmetry that fall outside the current established classification of topological insulators. These insulators exhibit no edge or surface modes in the energy spectrum and hence they are not edge metals when the Fermi level is in the bulk gap. However, they do exhibit protected modes in the entanglement spectrum localized on the cut between two entangled regions. Their entanglement entropy cannot be made to vanish adiabatically, and hence the insulators can be called topological. There is a direct connection between the inversion eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian band structure and the midgap states in the entanglement spectrum. The classification of protected entanglement levels is given by an integer N, which is the difference between the negative inversion eigenvalues at inversion symmetric points in the Brillouin zone, taken in sets of 2. When the Hamiltonian describes a Chern insulator or a nontrivial time-reversal invariant topological insulator, the entirety of the entanglement spectrum exhibits spectral flow. If the Chern number is zero for the former, or time reversal is broken in the latter, the entanglement spectrum does not have spectral flow, but, depending on the inversion eigenvalues, can still exhibit protected midgap bands similar to impurity bands in normal semiconductors. Although spectral flow is broken (implying the absence of real edge or surface modes in the original Hamiltonian), the midgap entanglement bands cannot be adiabatically removed, and the insulator is ``topological.'' We analyze the linear response of these insulators and provide proofs and examples of when the inversion eigenvalues determine a nontrivial charge polarization, a quantum Hall effect, an anisotropic three-dimensional (3D) quantum Hall effect, or a magnetoelectric polarization. In one dimension, we establish a link between the product of the inversion eigenvalues of all occupied bands at all inversion symmetric points and charge polarization. In two dimensions, we prove a link between the product of the inversion eigenvalues and the parity of the Chern number of the occupied bands. In three dimensions, we find a topological constraint on the product of the inversion eigenvalues thereby showing that some 3D materials are protected topological metals; we show the link between the inversion eigenvalues and the 3D Quantum Hall Effect, and analyze the magnetoelectric polarization ($\ensuremath{\theta}$ vacuum) in the absence of time-reversal symmetry.