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arXiv:2202.01642 · Physical Review Letters

Comment on “Coulomb Instabilities of a Three-Dimensional Higher-Order Topological Insulator”

Yu-Wen Lee, Min-Fong Yang

Published May 24, 2023• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Based on renormalization-group (RG) calculations, a recent Letter by Zhao et al [Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 176601 (2021)] claimed that three-dimensional second-order topological insulators (SOTIs) are always unstable to the Coulomb interaction and they will thus undergo topological phase transitions to either topological insulators (TIs) or normal insulators. While the calculations in this paper are correct, the conclusion about the topological phase transition from SOTI to TI is not true. The reason behind this false conclusion lies in that the authors use a wrong criterion to identify the phase transition. In this Comment we would like to remind that, to locate the possible transitions from SOTI to TI, an appropriate quantity is the sign-changing mass gap $m_\textrm{surf}$ for the surface states. By examining its behavior within RG approach, the stability of SOTI against weak Coulomb interactions is demonstrated.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.130.219701

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Based on renormalization-group (RG) calculations, a recent Letter by Zhao et al [Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 176601 (2021)] claimed that three-dimensional second-order topological insulators (SOTIs) are always unstable to the Coulomb interaction and they will thus undergo topological phase transitions to either topological insulators (TIs) or normal insulators. While the calculations in this paper are correct, the conclusion about the topological phase transition from SOTI to TI is not true. The reason behind this false conclusion lies in that the authors use a wrong criterion to identify the phase transition. In this Comment we would like to remind that, to locate the possible transitions from SOTI to TI, an appropriate quantity is the sign-changing mass gap msurfm_\textrm{surf}msurf​ for the surface states. By examining its behavior within RG approach, the stability of SOTI against weak Coulomb interactions is demonstrated.
In this article, we study the influence of long-range Coulomb interaction on three-dimensional second-order topological insulator (TI) by renormalization group theory. We find that both the analysis method and conclusions in the recent Letter Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 127}, 176601 (2021) are unreliable. There are two problems in this Letter. Firstly, the characteristic described by the RG flows m→∞m\rightarrow\inftym→∞ and D→0D\rightarrow0D→0 can not be used as the criterion for transition from second-order TI to TI, since this characteristic could be essentially not induced by Coulomb interaction but only results from the trivial power counting contribution of fermion action. Indeed, this characteristic is satisfied even for free second-order TI. Second, the flow of BBB is not paid attention, which is very important and should be seriously studied. In this article, we analyze carefully the corrections for the flows of the model parameters induced by Coulomb interaction. We find that the sign of mmm changes but the sign of BBB holds if the initial Coulomb strength is large enough, while the sign of mmm holds but the sign of BBB changes if the initial Coulomb strength takes small values. These results indicate that second-order TI is unstable to trivial band insulator not only under strong Coulomb interaction but also under weak Coulomb interaction. We also study the effects of disorder scattering in second-order TI by renormalization group theory. According to the criterion in Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 127}, 176601 (2021), weak disorder drives second-order TI to TI. However, we find that second-order TI is robust against weak disorder, since weak disorder does not give qualitative modification for second-order TI. This result is consistent with recent studies based on other methods. Interplay of Coulomb interaction and disorder in second-order TI is also investigated.
Topological insulators (TIs) are an exciting discovery because of their robustness against disorder and interactions. Recently, second-order TIs have been attracting increasing attention, because they host topologically protected 1D hinge states in 3D or 0D corner states in 2D. A significantly critical issue is whether the second-order TIs also survive interactions, but it is still unexplored. We study the effects of weak Coulomb interactions on a 3D second-order TI, with the help of renormalization-group calculations. We find that the 3D second-order TIs are always unstable, suffering from two types of topological phase transitions. One is from second-order TI to TI, the other is to normal insulator. The first type is accompanied by emergent time-reversal and inversion symmetries and has a dynamical critical exponent κ=1. The second type does not have the emergent symmetries but has nonuniversal dynamical critical exponents κ<1. Our results may inspire more inspections on the stability of higher-order topological states of matter and related novel quantum criticalities.
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 boundary of a topological insulator (TI) hosts an anomaly restricting its possible phases: e.g., three-dimensional (3D) strong and weak TIs maintain surface conductivity at any disorder if symmetry is preserved on average at least when electron interactions on the surface are weak. However, the interplay of strong interactions and disorder with the boundary anomaly has not yet been theoretically addressed. Here we study this combination for the edge of a two-dimensional TI and the surface of a 3D weak TI, showing how it can lead to an ``Anomalous Many Body Localized'' (AMBL) phase that preserves the anomaly. We discuss how the anomalous Kramers parity switching with $\ensuremath{\pi}$ flux arises in the bosonized theory of the localized helical state. The anomaly can be probed in localized boundaries by electrostatically sensing nonlinear hopping transport with e/2e/2e/2 shot noise. Our AMBL construction in 3D weak TIs fails for 3D strong TIs, which suggests that their anomaly restrictions are distinguished by strong interactions.
We investigate correlation effects in two-dimensional topological insulators (TI). In the first part, we discuss finite size effects for interacting systems of different sizes in a ribbon geometry. For large systems, there are two pairs of well separated massless modes on both edges. For these systems, we analyze the finite size effects using a standard bosonization approach. For small systems, where the edge states are massive Dirac fermions, we use the inhomogeneous dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) combined with iterative perturbation theory as an impurity solver to study interaction effects. We show that the finite size gap in the edge states is renormalized for weak interactions, which is consistent with a Fermi-liquid picture for small size TIs. In the second part, we investigate phase transitions in finite size TIs at zero temperature focusing on the effects of possible interedge umklapp scattering for the edge states within the inhomogeneous DMFT using the numerical renormalization group. We show that correlation effects are effectively stronger near the edge sites because the coordination number is smaller than in the bulk. Therefore the localization of the edge states around the edge sites, which is a fundamental property in TIs, is weakened for strong coupling strengths. However, we find no signs for ``edge Mott insulating states'' and the system stays in the topological insulating state, which is adiabatically connected to the noninteracting state for all interaction strengths smaller than the critical value. Increasing the interaction further, a nearly homogeneous Mott insulating state is stabilized.
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.