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arXiv:1308.4900 · Physical Review X

Topological Invariants and Ground-State Wave functions of Topological Insulators on a Torus

Zhong Wang, Shoucheng Zhang

Published Jan 21, 2014• 28 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Topological insulators are classified by ``topological invariants'' characterizing their electronic structures. Identifying and computing topological invariants for insulators in which electron-electron interactions are important is, however, difficult. Theorists now present a way to accomplish this task for a wide range of topological insulators.

DOI
10.1103/physrevx.4.011006

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Topological insulators are classified by ``topological invariants'' characterizing their electronic structures. Identifying and computing topological invariants for insulators in which electron-electron interactions are important is, however, difficult. Theorists now present a way to accomplish this task for a wide range of topological insulators.
Topological phase transitions in free fermion systems can be characterized by the closing of single-particle gap and the change in topological invariants. However, in the presence of electronic interactions, topological phase transitions can be more complicated. In paper I of this series [Phys. Rev. B 93, 195163 (2016)], we have proposed an efficient scheme to evaluate the topological invariants based on the single-particle Green's function formalism. Here, in paper II, we demonstrate several interaction-driven topological phase transitions (TPTs) in two-dimensional (2D) interacting topological insulators (TIs) via large-scale quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations, based on the scheme of evaluating topological invariants presented in paper I. Across these transitions, the defining symmetries of the TIs have been neither explicitly nor spontaneously broken. In the first two models, the topological invariants calculated from the Green's function formalism succeed in characterizing the topologically distinct phases and identifying interaction-driven TPTs. However, in the other two models, we find that the single-particle gap does not close and the topological invariants constructed from the single-particle Green's function acquire no change across the TPTs. Unexpected breakdown of the Green's function formalism in constructing the topological invariants is thus discovered. We thence classify the topological phase transitions in interacting TIs into two categories in practical computation: Those that have noninteracting correspondence can be characterized successfully by the topological invariants constructed from the Green's functions, while for the others that do not have noninteracting correspondence, the Green's function formalism experiences a breakdown, but more interesting and exciting phenomena, such as emergent collective critical modes at the transition, arise. Discussion on the success and breakdown of topological invariants constructed from the Green's function formalism in the context of symmetry protected topological (SPT) states is presented.
Topological insulators are noninteracting, gapped fermionic systems which have gapless boundary excitations. They are characterized by topological invariants, which can be written in many different ways, including in terms of Green's functions. Here we show that the existence of the edge states directly follows from the existence of the topological invariant written in terms of the Green's functions, for all ten classes of topological insulators in all spatial dimensions. We also show that the resulting edge states are characterized by their own topological invariant, whose value is equal to the topological invariant of the bulk insulator. This can be used to test whether a given model Hamiltonian can describe an edge of a topological insulator. Finally, we observe that the results discussed here apply equally well to interacting topological insulators, with certain modifications.
Topological phenomena in physical systems are determined by topological structures and are thus universal and protected against perturbations. We theoretically establish exotic topological phenomena and their consequences for experiments in crystalline systems such as topological insulators and topologically ordered phases. We show that protected one-dimensional fermionic modes may be associated with the line defects such as dislocations in three-dimensional topological insulators, and strong electron-electron repulsion may lead to topological Mott insulators via spontaneous spin-orbit correlations in three dimensions. We also predict anomalous Aharonov Bohm conductance oscillations maximized at half integer multiples of a flux quantum in a topological insulator nanowire with strong surface disorder, arising from surface curvature induced Berry phase. In addition, we classify three-dimensional inversion symmetric insulators and their quantized responses.Quantum entanglement provides a promising probe to the properties of many-body systems, especially topological phases not captured by local order parameters. We present a characterization of topological insulators using entanglement spectrum based only on bulk ground-state wave function. Further, by studying entanglement of trivial partitions, we establish topological order in candidate Gutzwiller projected wave functions for gapped spin liquids and Laughlin states; and with entanglement's dependence on the ground states for bipartition of a torus into two cylinders, we demonstrate a method to extract the modular matrices and statistics and braiding of quasiparticle excitations. Our method helps to determine the topological order with only the set of ground-state wave functions on a torus. Our variational Monte Carlo calculations of topological entanglement entropy agree well with theory. We also find a violation of the boundary law for a critical spin liquid of Gutzwiller projected Fermi sea on the triangular lattice, where the entanglement entropy's enhancement by a logarithmic factor reflects the presence of emergent fermions in a bosonic wave function.
We study one-dimensional, interacting, gapped fermionic systems described by variants of the Peierls-Hubbard model, and we characterize their phases via a topological invariant constructed out of their Green's functions. We demonstrate that the existence of topologically protected, zero-energy states at the boundaries of these systems can be tied to the value of the topological invariant, just like when working with the conventional, noninteracting topological insulators. We use a combination of analytical methods and the numerical density matrix renormalization group method to calculate the values of the topological invariant throughout the phase diagrams of these systems, thus deducing when topologically protected boundary states are present. We are also able to study topological states in spin systems because, deep in the Mott insulating regime, these fermionic systems reduce to spin chains. In this way, we associate the zero-energy states at the end of an antiferromagnetic spin-1 Heisenberg chain with a topological invariant equal to 2.
Crystalline symmetries give rise to topological invariants that can distinguish quantum phases of matter. Understanding these in strongly interacting systems is an ongoing research direction requiring non-perturbative methods. Recent developments have demonstrated that even classic models, like the Harper-Hofstadter model of free fermions on a lattice in a magnetic field, yield a host of crystalline symmetry protected topological invariants. Here we review some of these developments, focusing mainly on how to characterize, classify, and detect invariants arising from lattice translation and rotation symmetries along with charge conservation in two-dimensional systems, including integer and fractional Chern insulators.