Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1512.02080 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Topological invariants for interacting topological insulators. II. Breakdown of single-particle Green's function formalism

Yuan-Yao He, Han-Qing Wu, Zi Yang Meng, Zhong-Yi Lu

Published May 31, 2016• 33 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.93.195164

Related papers

Topological invariants for interacting topological insulators. I. Efficient numerical evaluation scheme and implementations

Yuan-Yao He, Han-Qing Wu, Zi Yang Meng +1 more

The aim of this series of two papers is to discuss topological invariants for interacting topological insulators (TIs). In the first paper (I), we provide a paradigm of efficient numerical evaluation scheme for topological invariants, in which we demystify the procedures and techniques employed in calculating ${Z}_{2}$ invariant and spin Chern number via zero-frequency single-particle Green's function in quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations. Here we introduce an interpolation process to overcome the ubiquitous finite-size effect, so that the calculated spin Chern number shows ideally quantized values. We also show that making use of symmetry properties of the underlying systems can greatly reduce the computational effort. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our numerical evaluation scheme, especially the interpolation process, for calculating topological invariants, we apply it on two independent two-dimensional models of interacting topological insulators. In the subsequent paper (II), we apply the scheme developed here to wider classes of models of interacting topological insulators, for which certain limitation of constructing topological invariant via single-particle Green's functions will be presented.

arXiv:1510.07816•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•May 31, 2016•24 citations

Weakly interacting topological insulators: Quantum criticality and the renormalization group approach

Wei Chen

For $D$-dimensional weakly interacting topological insulators in certain symmetry classes, the topological invariant can be calculated from a $D$- or $(D+1)$-dimensional integration over a certain curvature function that is expressed in terms of single-particle Green's functions. Based on the divergence of curvature function at the topological phase transition, we demonstrate how a renormalization group approach circumvents these integrations and reduces the necessary calculation to that for the Green's function alone, rendering a numerically efficient tool to identify topological phase transitions in a large parameter space. The method further unveils a number of statistical aspects related to the quantum criticality in weakly interacting topological insulators, including correlation function, critical exponents, and scaling laws, that can be used to characterize the topological phase transitions driven by either interacting or noninteracting parameters. We use 1D class BDI and 2D class A Dirac models with electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions to demonstrate these principles and find that interactions may change the critical exponents of the topological insulators.

arXiv:1801.00697•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Mar 14, 2018•38 citations

First-Order Character and Observable Signatures of Topological Quantum Phase Transitions

A. Amaricci, Jan Carl Budich, Massimo Capone +2 more

Topological quantum phase transitions are characterized by changes in global topological invariants. These invariants classify many-body systems beyond the conventional paradigm of local order parameters describing spontaneous symmetry breaking. For noninteracting electrons, it is well understood that such transitions are continuous and always accompanied by a gap closing in the energy spectrum, given that the symmetries protecting the topological phase are maintained. Here, we demonstrate that a sufficiently strong electron-electron interaction can fundamentally change the situation: we discover a topological quantum phase transition of first-order character in the genuine thermodynamic sense that occurs without a gap closing. Our theoretical study reveals the existence of a quantum critical endpoint associated with an orbital instability on the transition line between a 2D topological insulator and a trivial band insulator. Remarkably, this phenomenon entails unambiguous signatures related to the orbital occupations that can be detected experimentally.

arXiv:1411.7390•Physical Review Letters•May 8, 2015•114 citations

Manifestation of topological behaviors in interacting Weyl systems: One-body versus two-body correlations

Min-Fong Yang

Understanding correlation effects in topological phases of matter is at the forefront of current research in condensed matter physics. Here we try to clarify some subtleties in studying topological behaviors of interacting Weyl semimetals. It is well known that there exist two topological invariants defined to identify their topological character. One is the many-body Chern number, which can be directly linked to the Hall conductivity and thus to the two-particle correlations. The other is the topological index constructed from the single-particle Green's functions. Because the information on Green's functions is achieved more easily than the many-body wave functions, usually only the topological index is employed in the literature. However, the approach based on the single-particle Green's function can break down in the strongly correlated phase. For illustration, an exactly solvable two-orbital model with momentum-local two-body interactions is discussed, in which both topological invariants can be calculated analytically. We find that the topological index calculated from the Green's function formalism can be nonzero even for a nontopological strongly correlated phase with a vanishing many-body Chern number. In addition, we stress that the physical surface states implied by nonzero many-body Chern numbers should be the edge modes of particle-hole collective excitations, rather than those of a quasiparticle nature derived from the Green's function formalism. Our observations thus demonstrate the limitation of the validity of the Green's function formalism in the investigations of interacting topological materials.

arXiv:1909.10335•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Dec 23, 2019•14 citations

Characterization of a Topological Mott Insulator in One Dimension

Tsuneya Yoshida, Robert Peters, Satoshi Fujimoto +1 more

We investigate properties of a topological Mott insulator in one dimension by examining the bulk topological invariant and the entanglement spectrum of a correlated electron model. We clarify how gapless edge states in a noninteracting topological band insulator evolve into spinon edge states in a topological Mott insulator. Furthermore, we propose a topological Mott transition, which is a new type of topological phase transition which has never been observed in free fermion systems. This unconventional transition occurs in spin liquid phases in the Mott insulator and is accompanied by zeros of the single-electron Green's function and a gap closing in the spin excitation spectrum.

arXiv:1405.2147•Physical Review Letters•May 16, 2014•95 citations

Luttinger's Theorem Violation and Green's Function Topological Invariants in a Fractional Chern Insulator

Anton A. Markov, Andrey M. Nikishin, Nigel R. Cooper +2 more

Luttinger's theorem constrains the particle density of interacting fermions through global properties of the single-particle Green's function, and its violation signals a breakdown of the identification between the quantized Hall response and the Green-function-based Ishikawa-Matsuyama invariant. This phenomenon becomes especially compelling in strongly correlated topological phases, such as fractional Chern insulators, where fractionalized quasiparticles lack an adiabatic connection to electrons, raising the question of how Green's-function-based topological invariants manifest in such phases. Using exact diagonalization of the fermionic Harper-Hofstadter-Hubbard model, we compute bulk single-particle Green's functions deep inside a fractional Chern insulating phase and directly evaluate the Luttinger count, its possible correction (the Luttinger integral), and the Ishikawa-Matsuyama invariant $N_3[\mathrm{G}]$. We demonstrate a clear violation of Luttinger's theorem and show that the fractional nature of the many-body Chern number is encoded in the Středa response of the Luttinger integral, while the integer invariant $N_3[\mathrm{G}]$ arises from the Středa response of the Luttinger count. We also analytically prove that $N_3[\mathrm{G}]$ is fully determined by the Luttinger count together with the Chern number of the occupied Bloch band, upon neglecting Bloch-band mixing. Finally, we propose an experimental protocol to extract all Green-function-based topological invariants from local density-of-states measurements, experimentally accessible in fractional quantum Hall systems.

cond-mat.str-elCross-listedarXiv:2603.17006•Mar 19, 2026
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.
The aim of this series of two papers is to discuss topological invariants for interacting topological insulators (TIs). In the first paper (I), we provide a paradigm of efficient numerical evaluation scheme for topological invariants, in which we demystify the procedures and techniques employed in calculating Z2{Z}_{2}Z2​ invariant and spin Chern number via zero-frequency single-particle Green's function in quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations. Here we introduce an interpolation process to overcome the ubiquitous finite-size effect, so that the calculated spin Chern number shows ideally quantized values. We also show that making use of symmetry properties of the underlying systems can greatly reduce the computational effort. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our numerical evaluation scheme, especially the interpolation process, for calculating topological invariants, we apply it on two independent two-dimensional models of interacting topological insulators. In the subsequent paper (II), we apply the scheme developed here to wider classes of models of interacting topological insulators, for which certain limitation of constructing topological invariant via single-particle Green's functions will be presented.
For DDD-dimensional weakly interacting topological insulators in certain symmetry classes, the topological invariant can be calculated from a DDD- or (D+1)(D+1)(D+1)-dimensional integration over a certain curvature function that is expressed in terms of single-particle Green's functions. Based on the divergence of curvature function at the topological phase transition, we demonstrate how a renormalization group approach circumvents these integrations and reduces the necessary calculation to that for the Green's function alone, rendering a numerically efficient tool to identify topological phase transitions in a large parameter space. The method further unveils a number of statistical aspects related to the quantum criticality in weakly interacting topological insulators, including correlation function, critical exponents, and scaling laws, that can be used to characterize the topological phase transitions driven by either interacting or noninteracting parameters. We use 1D class BDI and 2D class A Dirac models with electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions to demonstrate these principles and find that interactions may change the critical exponents of the topological insulators.
Topological quantum phase transitions are characterized by changes in global topological invariants. These invariants classify many-body systems beyond the conventional paradigm of local order parameters describing spontaneous symmetry breaking. For noninteracting electrons, it is well understood that such transitions are continuous and always accompanied by a gap closing in the energy spectrum, given that the symmetries protecting the topological phase are maintained. Here, we demonstrate that a sufficiently strong electron-electron interaction can fundamentally change the situation: we discover a topological quantum phase transition of first-order character in the genuine thermodynamic sense that occurs without a gap closing. Our theoretical study reveals the existence of a quantum critical endpoint associated with an orbital instability on the transition line between a 2D topological insulator and a trivial band insulator. Remarkably, this phenomenon entails unambiguous signatures related to the orbital occupations that can be detected experimentally.
Understanding correlation effects in topological phases of matter is at the forefront of current research in condensed matter physics. Here we try to clarify some subtleties in studying topological behaviors of interacting Weyl semimetals. It is well known that there exist two topological invariants defined to identify their topological character. One is the many-body Chern number, which can be directly linked to the Hall conductivity and thus to the two-particle correlations. The other is the topological index constructed from the single-particle Green's functions. Because the information on Green's functions is achieved more easily than the many-body wave functions, usually only the topological index is employed in the literature. However, the approach based on the single-particle Green's function can break down in the strongly correlated phase. For illustration, an exactly solvable two-orbital model with momentum-local two-body interactions is discussed, in which both topological invariants can be calculated analytically. We find that the topological index calculated from the Green's function formalism can be nonzero even for a nontopological strongly correlated phase with a vanishing many-body Chern number. In addition, we stress that the physical surface states implied by nonzero many-body Chern numbers should be the edge modes of particle-hole collective excitations, rather than those of a quasiparticle nature derived from the Green's function formalism. Our observations thus demonstrate the limitation of the validity of the Green's function formalism in the investigations of interacting topological materials.
We investigate properties of a topological Mott insulator in one dimension by examining the bulk topological invariant and the entanglement spectrum of a correlated electron model. We clarify how gapless edge states in a noninteracting topological band insulator evolve into spinon edge states in a topological Mott insulator. Furthermore, we propose a topological Mott transition, which is a new type of topological phase transition which has never been observed in free fermion systems. This unconventional transition occurs in spin liquid phases in the Mott insulator and is accompanied by zeros of the single-electron Green's function and a gap closing in the spin excitation spectrum.
Luttinger's theorem constrains the particle density of interacting fermions through global properties of the single-particle Green's function, and its violation signals a breakdown of the identification between the quantized Hall response and the Green-function-based Ishikawa-Matsuyama invariant. This phenomenon becomes especially compelling in strongly correlated topological phases, such as fractional Chern insulators, where fractionalized quasiparticles lack an adiabatic connection to electrons, raising the question of how Green's-function-based topological invariants manifest in such phases. Using exact diagonalization of the fermionic Harper-Hofstadter-Hubbard model, we compute bulk single-particle Green's functions deep inside a fractional Chern insulating phase and directly evaluate the Luttinger count, its possible correction (the Luttinger integral), and the Ishikawa-Matsuyama invariant N3[G]N_3[\mathrm{G}]N3​[G]. We demonstrate a clear violation of Luttinger's theorem and show that the fractional nature of the many-body Chern number is encoded in the Středa response of the Luttinger integral, while the integer invariant N3[G]N_3[\mathrm{G}]N3​[G] arises from the Středa response of the Luttinger count. We also analytically prove that N3[G]N_3[\mathrm{G}]N3​[G] is fully determined by the Luttinger count together with the Chern number of the occupied Bloch band, upon neglecting Bloch-band mixing. Finally, we propose an experimental protocol to extract all Green-function-based topological invariants from local density-of-states measurements, experimentally accessible in fractional quantum Hall systems.