We determine conditions on the filling of electrons in a crystalline lattice to obtain the equivalent of a band insulator--a gapped insulator with neither symmetry breaking nor fractionalized excitations. We allow for strong interactions, which precludes a free particle description. Previous approaches that extend the Lieb-Schultz-Mattis argument invoked spin conservation in an essential way and cannot be applied to the physically interesting case of spin-orbit coupled systems. Here we introduce two approaches: The first one is an entanglement-based scheme, and the second one studies the system on an appropriate flat "Bieberbach" manifold to obtain the filling conditions for all 230 space groups. These approaches assume only time reversal rather than spin rotation invariance. The results depend crucially on whether the crystal symmetry is symmorphic. Our results clarify when one may infer the existence of an exotic ground state based on the absence of order, and we point out applications to experimentally realized materials. Extensions to new situations involving purely spin models are also mentioned.
We determine conditions on the filling of electrons in a crystalline lattice to obtain the equivalent of a band insulator--a gapped insulator with neither symmetry breaking nor fractionalized excitations. We allow for strong interactions, which precludes a free particle description. Previous approaches that extend the Lieb-Schultz-Mattis argument invoked spin conservation in an essential way and cannot be applied to the physically interesting case of spin-orbit coupled systems. Here we introduce two approaches: The first one is an entanglement-based scheme, and the second one studies the system on an appropriate flat "Bieberbach" manifold to obtain the filling conditions for all 230 space groups. These approaches assume only time reversal rather than spin rotation invariance. The results depend crucially on whether the crystal symmetry is symmorphic. Our results clarify when one may infer the existence of an exotic ground state based on the absence of order, and we point out applications to experimentally realized materials. Extensions to new situations involving purely spin models are also mentioned.
We determine conditions on the filling of electrons in a crystalline lattice to obtain the equivalent of a band insulator -- a gapped insulator with neither symmetry breaking nor fractionalized excitations. We allow for strong interactions, which precludes a free particle description. Previous approaches that extend the Lieb-Schultz-Mattis argument invoked spin conservation in an essential way, and cannot be applied to the physically interesting case of spin-orbit coupled systems. Here we introduce two approaches, the first an entanglement based scheme, while the second studies the system on an appropriate flat `Bieberbach' manifold to obtain the filling conditions for all 230 space groups. These approaches only assume time reversal rather than spin rotation invariance. The results depend crucially on whether the crystal symmetry is symmorphic. Our results clarify when one may infer the existence of an exotic ground state based on the absence of order, and we point out applications to experimentally realized materials. Extensions to new situations involving purely spin models are also mentioned.
The Lieb-Schultz-Mattis (LSM) theorem and its higher-dimensional extensions forbid the existence of a unique, symmetric, and gapped ground state at fractional fillings in quantum many-body systems with a conserved particle number (or spin angular momentum) and the conventional translation symmetry of Euclidean lattices. In this work, we propose a generalization of the LSM theorem to quantum many-body systems on hyperbolic lattices, i.e., regular tessellations of two-dimensional negatively curved space. By leveraging concepts from hyperbolic band theory in a many-body setting, we adapt Oshikawa's flux-threading argument to periodic hyperbolic lattices with a non-Euclidean (Fuchsian) translation symmetry and compute a lower-bound to the ground-state degeneracy as a function of filling and lattice geometry. We explore the consequences of LSM constraints for gapped phases of hyperbolic quantum matter and suggest frustrated spin models on hyperbolic analogs of the square and triangular lattices as promising platforms for realizing symmetric spin liquids in hyperbolic space.
Following recent developments in the classification of bosonic short-range entangled phases, we examine many-body quantum systems whose ground state fractionalization obeys the Lieb-Schultz-Mattis (LSM) theorem. We generalize the topological classification of such phases by LSM anomalies (arXiv:1907.08204) to take magnetic and non-symmorphic lattice effects into account, and provide direct computations of the LSM anomaly in specific examples. We show that the anomaly-free condition coincides with established filling constraints (arXiv:1705.09298, arXiv:1505.04193), and we also derived new ones on novel crystalline quantum systems.
We study quantum many-body systems in the presence of an exotic antiunitary translation or inversion symmetry involving time reversal. Based on a symmetry-twisting method and spectrum robustness, we propose that a half-integer spin chain that respects any of these two antiunitary crystalline symmetries in addition to the discrete Z_{2}×Z_{2} global spin-rotation symmetry must either be gapless or possess degenerate ground states. This explains the gaplessness of a class of chiral spin models not indicated by the Lieb-Schultz-Mattis theorem and its known extensions. Moreover, we present symmetry classes with minimal sets of generators that give nontrivial Lieb-Schultz-Mattis-type constraints, argued by the bulk-boundary correspondence in 2D symmetry-protected topological phases as well as lattice homotopy. Our results for detecting the ingappability of 1D quantum magnets from the interplay between spin-rotation symmetries and magnetic space groups are applicable to systems with a broader class of spin interactions, including Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya and triple-product interactions.
Topology is routinely used to understand the physics of electronic insulators. However, for strongly interacting electronic matter, such as Mott insulators, a comprehensive topological characterization is still lacking. When their ground state only contains short-range entanglement and does not break symmetries spontaneously, they generically realize crystalline fermionic symmetry-protected topological phases (cFSPTs), supporting gapless modes at the boundaries or at the lattice defects. Here, we provide an exhaustive classification of cFSPTs in two dimensions with charge-conservation and spinful time-reversal symmetries, namely, those generically present in spin-orbit coupled insulators, for any of the 17 wallpaper groups. It has been shown that the classification of cFSPTs can be understood from appropriate real-space decorations of lower-dimensional subspaces, and we expose how these relate to the Wyckoff positions of the lattice. We find that all nontrivial one-dimensional decorations require electronic interactions. Furthermore, we provide model Hamiltonians for various decorations, and discuss the signatures of cFSPTs. This classification paves the way to further explore topological interacting insulators, providing the backbone information in generic model systems and ultimately in experiments.
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.