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arXiv:2101.08546 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Real-space representation of the winding number for a one-dimensional chiral-symmetric topological insulator

Ling Lin, Yongguan Ke, Chaohong Lee

Published Jun 21, 2021• 61 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The winding number has been widely used as an invariant for diagnosing topological phases in one-dimensional chiral-symmetric systems. We put forward a real-space representation for the winding number. Remarkably, our method reproduces an exactly quantized winding number even in the presence of disorders that break translation symmetry but preserve chiral symmetry. We prove that our real-space representation of the winding number, the winding number defined through the twisted boundary condition, and the real-space winding number derived previously [Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 046802 (2014)], are equivalent in the thermodynamic limit at half-filling. Our method also works for the case of filling less than one half, where the winding number is not necessarily quantized. Around the disorder-induced topological phase transition, the real-space winding number has large fluctuations for different disordered samples, however, its average over an ensemble of disorder samples may well identify the topological phase transition. Besides, we show that our real-space winding number can be expressed as a Bott index, which has been used to represent the Chern number for two-dimensional systems.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.103.224208

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The winding number has been widely used as an invariant for diagnosing topological phases in one-dimensional chiral-symmetric systems. We put forward a real-space representation for the winding number. Remarkably, our method reproduces an exactly quantized winding number even in the presence of disorders that break translation symmetry but preserve chiral symmetry. We prove that our real-space representation of the winding number, the winding number defined through the twisted boundary condition, and the real-space winding number derived previously [Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 046802 (2014)], are equivalent in the thermodynamic limit at half-filling. Our method also works for the case of filling less than one half, where the winding number is not necessarily quantized. Around the disorder-induced topological phase transition, the real-space winding number has large fluctuations for different disordered samples, however, its average over an ensemble of disorder samples may well identify the topological phase transition. Besides, we show that our real-space winding number can be expressed as a Bott index, which has been used to represent the Chern number for two-dimensional systems.
The chiral AIII symmetry class in the classification table of topological insulators contains topological phases classified by a winding number ν for each odd space dimension. An open problem for this class is the characterization of the phases and phase boundaries in the presence of strong disorder. In this work, we derive a covariant real-space formula for ν and, using an explicit one-dimensional disordered topological model, we show that ν remains quantized and nonfluctuating when disorder is turned on, even though the bulk energy spectrum is completely localized. Furthermore, ν remains robust even after the insulating gap is filled with localized states, but when the disorder is increased even further, an abrupt change of ν to a trivial value is observed. Using exact analytic calculations, we show that this marks a critical point where the localization length diverges. As such, in the presence of disorder, the AIII class displays markedly different physics from everything known to date, with robust invariants being carried entirely by localized states and bulk extended states emerging from an absolutely localized spectrum. Detailed maps and a clear physical description of the phases and phase boundaries are presented based on numerical and exact analytic calculations.
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We consider the topological protection of entanglement and particle fluctuations for a general one-dimensional chiral topological insulator with winding number I\mathcal{I}I. We prove, in particular, that when the periodic system is divided spatially into two equal halves, the single-particle entanglement spectrum has 2∣I∣2|\mathcal{I}|2∣I∣ protected eigenvalues at 1/21/21/2. Therefore the number fluctuations are bounded from below by $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{N}^{2}\ensuremath{\ge}|\mathcal{I}|/2$ and the entanglement entropy by $S\ensuremath{\ge}2|\mathcal{I}|ln2$. We note that our results are obtained by applying directly an index theorem to the microscopic model and do not rely on an equivalence to a continuum model or a bulk-boundary correspondence for a slowly varying boundary.
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In this Letter we supervisedly train neural networks to distinguish different topological phases in the context of topological band insulators. After training with Hamiltonians of one-dimensional insulators with chiral symmetry, the neural network can predict their topological winding numbers with nearly 100% accuracy, even for Hamiltonians with larger winding numbers that are not included in the training data. These results show a remarkable success that the neural network can capture the global and nonlinear topological features of quantum phases from local inputs. By opening up the neural network, we confirm that the network does learn the discrete version of the winding number formula. We also make a couple of remarks regarding the role of the symmetry and the opposite effect of regularization techniques when applying machine learning to physical systems.
Local topological markers, topological invariants evaluated by local expectation values, are valuable for characterizing topological phases in materials lacking translation invariance. The Chern marker-the Chern number expressed in terms of the Fourier transformed Chern character-is an easily applicable local marker in even dimensions, but there are no analogous expressions for odd dimensions. We provide general analytic expressions for local markers for free-fermion topological states in odd dimensions protected by local symmetries: a Chiral marker, a local Z marker which in case of translation invariance is equivalent to the chiral winding number, and a Chern-Simons marker, a local Z_{2} marker characterizing all nonchiral phases in odd dimensions. We achieve this by introducing a one-parameter family P_{ϑ} of single-particle density matrices interpolating between a trivial state and the state of interest. By interpreting the parameter ϑ as an additional dimension, we calculate the Chern marker for the family P_{ϑ}. We demonstrate the practical use of these markers by characterizing the topological phases of two amorphous Hamiltonians in three dimensions: a topological superconductor (Z classification) and a topological insulator (Z_{2} classification).