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arXiv:1805.02831 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Entanglement polarization for the topological quadrupole phase

Takahiro Fukui, Yasuhiro Hatsugai

Published Jul 30, 2018• 41 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We propose the entanglement dipole polarization to describe the topological quadrupole phase. The quadrupole moment can be regarded as a pair of the dipole moment, in which the total dipole moment is canceled. The entanglement polarization, we propose, is useful to detect such a constituent dipole polarization. We first introduce partitions of sites in the unit cell and divide the system into two subsystems. Then, introducing an entanglement Hamiltonian by tracing out one of the subsystems partly, we compute the dipole polarization of the occupied states associated with the entanglement Hamiltonian, which is referred to as the entanglement polarization. Although the total dipole polarization is vanishing, those of the subsystems can be finite. The entanglement dipole polarization is quantized by reflection symmetries. We also introduce the entanglement polarization of the edge states, which reveals that the edge states themselves are gapped and topologically nontrivial. Therefore, such edge states yield the zero energy edge states if the system has boundaries. This is the origin of the corner states.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.98.035147

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We propose the entanglement dipole polarization to describe the topological quadrupole phase. The quadrupole moment can be regarded as a pair of the dipole moment, in which the total dipole moment is canceled. The entanglement polarization, we propose, is useful to detect such a constituent dipole polarization. We first introduce partitions of sites in the unit cell and divide the system into two subsystems. Then, introducing an entanglement Hamiltonian by tracing out one of the subsystems partly, we compute the dipole polarization of the occupied states associated with the entanglement Hamiltonian, which is referred to as the entanglement polarization. Although the total dipole polarization is vanishing, those of the subsystems can be finite. The entanglement dipole polarization is quantized by reflection symmetries. We also introduce the entanglement polarization of the edge states, which reveals that the edge states themselves are gapped and topologically nontrivial. Therefore, such edge states yield the zero energy edge states if the system has boundaries. This is the origin of the corner states.
The quadrupole insulator is a well-known instance of higher-order topological insulators in two dimensions, which possesses midgap corner states in both the energy spectrum and entanglement spectrum. Here, by constructing and exploring a model Hamiltonian under a staggered Z2\mathbb{Z}_2Z2​ gauge field that respects momentum-glide reflection symmetries, we surprisingly find a quadrupole insulator that lacks zero-energy corner modes in its energy spectrum, despite possessing a nonzero quadrupole moment. Remarkably, the existence of midgap corner modes is found in the entanglement spectrum. Since these midgap states cannot be continuously eliminated, the quadrupole insulator cannot be continuously transformed into a trivial topological insulator, thereby confirming its topological nature. We show that the breakdown of the correspondence between the energy spectrum and entanglement spectrum occurs due to the closure of the edge energy gap when the Hamiltonian is flattened. Finally, we present a model that demonstrates an insulator with corner modes in the energy spectrum even in the absence of the quadrupole moment. In this phase, the entanglement spectrum does not display any midgap states. The results suggest that the bulk-edge correspondence of quadrupole insulators generally manifests in the entanglement spectrum rather than the energy spectrum.
The Berry phase provides a modern formulation of electric polarization in crystals. We extend this concept to higher electric multipole moments and determine the necessary conditions and minimal models for which the quadrupole and octupole moments are topologically quantized electromagnetic observables. Such systems exhibit gapped boundaries that are themselves lower-dimensional topological phases. Furthermore, they host topologically protected corner states carrying fractional charge, exhibiting fractionalization at the boundary of the boundary. To characterize these insulating phases of matter, we introduce a paradigm in which "nested" Wilson loops give rise to topological invariants that have been overlooked. We propose three realistic experimental implementations of this topological behavior that can be immediately tested. Our work opens a venue for the expansion of the classification of topological phases of matter.
We revisit a model for gapped fractonic order in (2+1) dimensions (a symmetric-traceless tensor gauge theory with conservation of dipole and trace-quadrupole moments described in [1]) and compute its ground-state entanglement entropy on 2 .Along the way, we quantize the theory on open subsets of 2 which gives rise to gapless edge excitations that are Lifshitz-type scalar theories.We additionally explore varieties of gauge-invariant extended operators and rephrase the fractonic physics in terms of the local deformability of these operators.We explore similarities of this model to the effective field theories describing quantum Hall fluids: in particular, quantization of dipole moments through a novel compact symmetry leads us to interpret the vacuum of this theory as a dipole condensate atop of which dipoles with fractionalized moments appear as quasi-particle excitations with Abelian anyonic statistics.This interpretation is reflected in the subleading "topological entanglement" correction to the entanglement entropy.We extend this result to a series of models with conserved multipole moments.
The entanglement spectrum is a useful tool to study topological phases of matter, and contains valuable information about the ground state of the system. Here, we study its properties for free non-Hermitian systems for both point-gapped and line-gapped phases. While the entanglement spectrum only retains part of the topological information in the former case, it is very similar to Hermitian systems in the latter. In particular, it not only mimics the topological edge modes, but also contains all the information about the polarization, even in systems that are not topological. Furthermore, we show that the Wilson loop is equivalent to the many-body polarization and that it reproduces the phase diagram for the system with open boundaries, despite being computed for a periodic system.
Higher-order topological insulators are materials with a bulk energy gap featuring gapless modes at (d−n)(d-n)(d−n)-dimensional edges, where n>1n > 1n>1. Despite this modified bulk-boundary correspondence, their nontrivial topology can nevertheless be observed through the bipartite entanglement spectrum. Inspired by works suggesting fluctuations in conserved quantities could be used to study topology in one-dimensional systems, which likewise feature zero-dimensional edge modes, we extend this treatment to a two-dimensional second-order topological insulator where corner states play an analogous role. We show that the standard bipartite entanglement entropy and particle number fluctuation lack striking signals of topological phase transitions, both in the static case and in the time evolution after a quench, obscured by an area-law term from the subsystem edges. By introducing a quadripartite construction of the subsystem, we show that it is possible to isolate the topological contributions, producing sharp transition peaks in both quantities, observable by studying subsystems much smaller than the full system. As particle number fluctuations are accessible in existing experiments, these results establish a concrete and scalable path to experimental detection of the entanglement in higher-order topological insulators.