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Bulletin of the American Physical Society

Z 2 Topological Quantum Paramagnet on a honeycomb bilayer

Darshan G. Joshi, Andreas P. Schnyder

Published Mar 5, 2018• 1 citation
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Abstract

Topological quantum paramagnets are exotic states of matter, whose magnetic excitations have a topological band structure, while the ground state is topologically trivial. Here we show that a simple model of quantum spins on a honeycomb bilayer hosts a time-reversal-symmetry protected ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ topological quantum paramagnet (topological triplon insulator) in the presence of spin-orbit coupling. The excitation spectrum of this quantum paramagnet consists of three triplon bands, two of which carry a nontrivial ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ index. As a consequence, there appear two counterpropagating triplon excitation modes at the edge of the system. We compute the triplon edge state spectrum and the ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ index for various parameter choices. We further show that upon making one of the Heisenberg couplings stronger, the system undergoes a topological quantum phase transition, where the ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ index vanishes, to a different topological quantum paramagnet. In this case the counterpopagating triplon edge modes are disconnected from the bulk excitations and are protected by a chiral and a unitary symmetry. We discuss possible realizations of our model in real materials, in particular ${d}^{4}$ Mott insulators, and their potential applications.

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Z2 topological quantum paramagnet on a honeycomb bilayer

Darshan G. Joshi, Andreas P. Schnyder

Topological quantum paramagnets are exotic states of matter, whose magnetic excitations have a topological band structure, while the ground state is topologically trivial. Here we show that a simple model of quantum spins on a honeycomb bilayer hosts a time-reversal-symmetry protected ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ topological quantum paramagnet (topological triplon insulator) in the presence of spin-orbit coupling. The excitation spectrum of this quantum paramagnet consists of three triplon bands, two of which carry a nontrivial ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ index. As a consequence, there appear two counterpropagating triplon excitation modes at the edge of the system. We compute the triplon edge state spectrum and the ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ index for various parameter choices. We further show that upon making one of the Heisenberg couplings stronger, the system undergoes a topological quantum phase transition, where the ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ index vanishes, to a different topological quantum paramagnet. In this case the counterpopagating triplon edge modes are disconnected from the bulk excitations and are protected by a chiral and a unitary symmetry. We discuss possible realizations of our model in real materials, in particular ${d}^{4}$ Mott insulators, and their potential applications.

arXiv:1809.06387•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Jul 26, 2019•24 citations

Topological insulators on the decorated honeycomb lattice

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We show that the decorated honeycomb (star) lattice supports a number of topological insulating phases with a nontrivial ${Z}_{2}$ invariant and time-reversal symmetry protected gapless edge modes. We investigate the stability of these phases with respect to various symmetry-breaking perturbations and demonstrate the connection to the recent discovery of an exactly solvable $S=1/2$ chiral spin-liquid model [Yao and Kivelson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 247203 (2007)] with non-Abelian and Abelian excitations on the same lattice at strong interaction strength. Our work highlights the relationship between noninteracting topological band insulators and strongly interacting topologically ordered spin systems, and points to promising avenues for enlarging the number of known examples of both.

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Topological quantum paramagnet in a quantum spin ladder

Darshan G. Joshi, Andreas P. Schnyder

It has recently been found that bosonic excitations of ordered media, such as phonons or spinons, can exhibit topologically nontrivial band structures. Of particular interest are magnon and triplon excitations in quantum magnets, as they can easily be manipulated by an applied field. Here, we study triplon excitations in an $S=1/2$ quantum spin ladder and show that they exhibit nontrivial topology, even in the quantum-disordered paramagnetic phase. Our analysis reveals that the paramagnetic phase actually consists of two separate regions with topologically distinct triplon excitations. We demonstrate that the topological transition between these two regions can be tuned by an external magnetic field. The winding number that characterizes the topology of the triplons is derived and evaluated. By bulk-boundary correspondence, we find that the nonzero winding number implies the presence of localized triplon end states. Experimental signatures and possible physical realizations of the topological paramagnetic phase are discussed.

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Topological Spin Liquid with Symmetry-Protected Edge States

Yan-Cheng Wang, Chen Fang, Meng Cheng +2 more

Topological spin liquids are robust quantum states of matter with long-range entanglement and possess many exotic properties such as the fractional statistics of the elementary excitations. Yet these states, short of local parameters like all topological states, are elusive for conventional experimental probes. In this work, we combine theoretical analysis and quantum Monte Carlo numerics on a frustrated spin model which hosts a $\mathbb Z_2$ topological spin liquid ground state, and demonstrate that the presence of symmetry-protected gapless edge modes is a characteristic feature of the state, originating from the nontrivial symmetry fractionalization of the elementary excitations. Experimental observation of these modes on the edge would directly indicate the existence of the topological spin liquids in the bulk, analogous to the fact that the observation of Dirac edge states confirmed the existence of topological insulators.

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Symmetry-protected topological phase for spin-tensor-momentum-coupled ultracold atoms

Zhoutao Lei, Yuangang Deng, Chaohong Lee

We propose a realizable experiment scheme to construct a one-dimensional synthetic magnetic flux lattice with spin-tensor-momentum coupled spin-1 atoms and explore its exotic topological states. Different from the Altland-Zirnbauer classification, we show that our system hosts a symmetry-protected phase protected by a magnetic group symmetry ($\mathcal{M}$) and characterized by a ${Z}_{2}$ topological invariant. In single-particle spectra, we show that the topological nontrivial phase supports two kinds of edge states, which include two (four) zero-energy edge modes in the absence (presence) of two-photon detuning. We further study the bulk-edge correspondence in a non-Hermitian model by taking into account the particle dissipation. It is shown that the non-Hermitian system preserves the bulk-edge correspondence under the $\mathcal{M}$ symmetry but exhibits the non-Hermitian skin effect with breaking the $\mathcal{M}$ symmetry at nonzero magnetic flux. This work provides insights in understanding the exotic topological quantum states of high-spin systems and facilitating their experimental explorations.

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Quantum field theoretic descriptions of topological phases in two and three dimensions

Gil Young Cho

Topological phases of matter are purely quantum mechanical and have no classical analogue. Most phases in nature can be classified and studied classically through the concept of symmetry breaking and its theoretical description, Landau-Ginzburg field theory. In contrast to the general wisdom of Landau-Ginzburg field theory, the topological phases share the same symmetry as a trivial insulator and still are different phases. Having gapped spectrum in bulk, they support a metallic edge excition robust against symmetry-respecting perturbation or an emergent fractional excitation in bulk. Following after fractional quantum Hall fluids, many topologically orderd phases, such as spin liquids and topological insulators, have been found and studied. Spin liquids are disordered phases of frustrated antiferromagnets and do not freeze and order even at the lowest temperature. They support an electrically neutral spin-1/2 excitation, which does not exist in a microscopic scale, with emergent dynamical gauge field in bulk and do not have an adiabatic path to a trivial paramagnet phase. The topological insulators are time-reversal symmetric band insulators which cannot evolve smoothly into a trivial insulator with the symmetry, and they have been intensely studied theoretically and experimetally for the last decade. Though the topological insulators are inherently non-interacting systems, they have exotic gapless edge and surface states which demonstrate many interesting quantum phenomena such as fractionalization, axionic electromagnetism, and half quantum Hall effect. In this thesis, we study various quantum phenomena of the topological phases, mainly of the topological insulator and its close relatives in which the physics of spin liquids has been merged into. As they are intrinsically quantum many-body states, the quantum field theory is an invaluable tool to explore the venue of the phases and will be used thorougly in this work. First, we present a topological field theoretic description of the topological insulators and translational symmetric Z2 spin liquid. We demostrate that abelian BF theory is an effective field theory for the two and three dimensional topological insulators. We show that the phenomenologies of BF theory are consistent with those of the topological insulators such as gapless edge and surface excitations and response functions to external gauge field. The same form of the BF theory is also applicable to study the certain classes of Z2 spin liquids with the gapless edge states. We closely examine the possible gapless edge theory of the BF theory and the translational symmetric spin liquids, and we show that the effective BF theories capture the bulk properties as well as the gapless edge spectrum of the spin liquid. Also we discuss the zero-temperature phase diagram of a thin film three dimensional topological insulators with two competing mass terms: time-reversal symmetric exciton condensation and time-reversal symmetry breaking Zeeman effect. There are two phases, quantum spin Hall phase and quantum anomalous Hall phase, and both phases support fractional excitations. We derive an effective topological field theory for the fractional excitations and examine the origin of the fractional excitations. Next we consider the relatives of the topological insulators. First we discuss the proximate symmetry broken phases of topological Mott insulator, a U(1) spin liquid with fermionic spinons in the topological insulator state. The topologically non-trivial band structure of the spinon generates the axion term for the gauge field, and we show that the axion term changes the nature of the confined phase of the spin liquid. Contrast to the conventional confined phase which has only a bond order, the confined phase of the spin liquid is in general a coexisting phase of the two different orders : a current order and a bond order. We then consider another relative of the topological insulator: a bosonic symmetry protected topological phase in two dimensional space, with both PSU(N) and time reversal symmetry. We develop an effective field theory for the phase, which is a SU(N) principal chiral model with a theta-term, and reveal the physics of the topological phase in detail.Finally we consider a topological semimetal, namely a Weyl semimetal. We first demonstrate that the Weyl semimetal can be realized in the magnetically doped topological band insulators. We explicitly derive the low energy theory of Weyl points from the general continuum Hamiltonian and tight-binding model of the topological insulators. Then we study superconducting instabilities of doped Weyl semimetals. We consider a minimal model for a Weyl semimetal and study the superconducting instabilities induced by a short-ranged attractive interaction. With the interaction, we find two competing states: a fully gapped finite-momentum pairing state and a nodal even-parity pairing state. We show that, in a mean field approximateion, the finite-momentum pairing state wins energetically against the usual even-parity paired state. We also show that exotic modes are localized at the full and half quantum vortices of the finite-momentum pairing state.

•Jan 1, 2013•0 citations
Topological quantum paramagnets are exotic states of matter, whose magnetic excitations have a topological band structure, while the ground state is topologically trivial. Here we show that a simple model of quantum spins on a honeycomb bilayer hosts a time-reversal-symmetry protected Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ topological quantum paramagnet (topological triplon insulator) in the presence of spin-orbit coupling. The excitation spectrum of this quantum paramagnet consists of three triplon bands, two of which carry a nontrivial Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ index. As a consequence, there appear two counterpropagating triplon excitation modes at the edge of the system. We compute the triplon edge state spectrum and the Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ index for various parameter choices. We further show that upon making one of the Heisenberg couplings stronger, the system undergoes a topological quantum phase transition, where the Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ index vanishes, to a different topological quantum paramagnet. In this case the counterpopagating triplon edge modes are disconnected from the bulk excitations and are protected by a chiral and a unitary symmetry. We discuss possible realizations of our model in real materials, in particular d4{d}^{4}d4 Mott insulators, and their potential applications.
Topological quantum paramagnets are exotic states of matter, whose magnetic excitations have a topological band structure, while the ground state is topologically trivial. Here we show that a simple model of quantum spins on a honeycomb bilayer hosts a time-reversal-symmetry protected Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ topological quantum paramagnet (topological triplon insulator) in the presence of spin-orbit coupling. The excitation spectrum of this quantum paramagnet consists of three triplon bands, two of which carry a nontrivial Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ index. As a consequence, there appear two counterpropagating triplon excitation modes at the edge of the system. We compute the triplon edge state spectrum and the Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ index for various parameter choices. We further show that upon making one of the Heisenberg couplings stronger, the system undergoes a topological quantum phase transition, where the Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ index vanishes, to a different topological quantum paramagnet. In this case the counterpopagating triplon edge modes are disconnected from the bulk excitations and are protected by a chiral and a unitary symmetry. We discuss possible realizations of our model in real materials, in particular d4{d}^{4}d4 Mott insulators, and their potential applications.
We show that the decorated honeycomb (star) lattice supports a number of topological insulating phases with a nontrivial Z2{Z}_{2}Z2​ invariant and time-reversal symmetry protected gapless edge modes. We investigate the stability of these phases with respect to various symmetry-breaking perturbations and demonstrate the connection to the recent discovery of an exactly solvable S=1/2S=1/2S=1/2 chiral spin-liquid model [Yao and Kivelson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 247203 (2007)] with non-Abelian and Abelian excitations on the same lattice at strong interaction strength. Our work highlights the relationship between noninteracting topological band insulators and strongly interacting topologically ordered spin systems, and points to promising avenues for enlarging the number of known examples of both.
It has recently been found that bosonic excitations of ordered media, such as phonons or spinons, can exhibit topologically nontrivial band structures. Of particular interest are magnon and triplon excitations in quantum magnets, as they can easily be manipulated by an applied field. Here, we study triplon excitations in an S=1/2S=1/2S=1/2 quantum spin ladder and show that they exhibit nontrivial topology, even in the quantum-disordered paramagnetic phase. Our analysis reveals that the paramagnetic phase actually consists of two separate regions with topologically distinct triplon excitations. We demonstrate that the topological transition between these two regions can be tuned by an external magnetic field. The winding number that characterizes the topology of the triplons is derived and evaluated. By bulk-boundary correspondence, we find that the nonzero winding number implies the presence of localized triplon end states. Experimental signatures and possible physical realizations of the topological paramagnetic phase are discussed.
Topological spin liquids are robust quantum states of matter with long-range entanglement and possess many exotic properties such as the fractional statistics of the elementary excitations. Yet these states, short of local parameters like all topological states, are elusive for conventional experimental probes. In this work, we combine theoretical analysis and quantum Monte Carlo numerics on a frustrated spin model which hosts a Z2\mathbb Z_2Z2​ topological spin liquid ground state, and demonstrate that the presence of symmetry-protected gapless edge modes is a characteristic feature of the state, originating from the nontrivial symmetry fractionalization of the elementary excitations. Experimental observation of these modes on the edge would directly indicate the existence of the topological spin liquids in the bulk, analogous to the fact that the observation of Dirac edge states confirmed the existence of topological insulators.
We propose a realizable experiment scheme to construct a one-dimensional synthetic magnetic flux lattice with spin-tensor-momentum coupled spin-1 atoms and explore its exotic topological states. Different from the Altland-Zirnbauer classification, we show that our system hosts a symmetry-protected phase protected by a magnetic group symmetry (M\mathcal{M}M) and characterized by a Z2{Z}_{2}Z2​ topological invariant. In single-particle spectra, we show that the topological nontrivial phase supports two kinds of edge states, which include two (four) zero-energy edge modes in the absence (presence) of two-photon detuning. We further study the bulk-edge correspondence in a non-Hermitian model by taking into account the particle dissipation. It is shown that the non-Hermitian system preserves the bulk-edge correspondence under the M\mathcal{M}M symmetry but exhibits the non-Hermitian skin effect with breaking the M\mathcal{M}M symmetry at nonzero magnetic flux. This work provides insights in understanding the exotic topological quantum states of high-spin systems and facilitating their experimental explorations.
Topological phases of matter are purely quantum mechanical and have no classical analogue. Most phases in nature can be classified and studied classically through the concept of symmetry breaking and its theoretical description, Landau-Ginzburg field theory. In contrast to the general wisdom of Landau-Ginzburg field theory, the topological phases share the same symmetry as a trivial insulator and still are different phases. Having gapped spectrum in bulk, they support a metallic edge excition robust against symmetry-respecting perturbation or an emergent fractional excitation in bulk. Following after fractional quantum Hall fluids, many topologically orderd phases, such as spin liquids and topological insulators, have been found and studied. Spin liquids are disordered phases of frustrated antiferromagnets and do not freeze and order even at the lowest temperature. They support an electrically neutral spin-1/2 excitation, which does not exist in a microscopic scale, with emergent dynamical gauge field in bulk and do not have an adiabatic path to a trivial paramagnet phase. The topological insulators are time-reversal symmetric band insulators which cannot evolve smoothly into a trivial insulator with the symmetry, and they have been intensely studied theoretically and experimetally for the last decade. Though the topological insulators are inherently non-interacting systems, they have exotic gapless edge and surface states which demonstrate many interesting quantum phenomena such as fractionalization, axionic electromagnetism, and half quantum Hall effect. In this thesis, we study various quantum phenomena of the topological phases, mainly of the topological insulator and its close relatives in which the physics of spin liquids has been merged into. As they are intrinsically quantum many-body states, the quantum field theory is an invaluable tool to explore the venue of the phases and will be used thorougly in this work. First, we present a topological field theoretic description of the topological insulators and translational symmetric Z2 spin liquid. We demostrate that abelian BF theory is an effective field theory for the two and three dimensional topological insulators. We show that the phenomenologies of BF theory are consistent with those of the topological insulators such as gapless edge and surface excitations and response functions to external gauge field. The same form of the BF theory is also applicable to study the certain classes of Z2 spin liquids with the gapless edge states. We closely examine the possible gapless edge theory of the BF theory and the translational symmetric spin liquids, and we show that the effective BF theories capture the bulk properties as well as the gapless edge spectrum of the spin liquid. Also we discuss the zero-temperature phase diagram of a thin film three dimensional topological insulators with two competing mass terms: time-reversal symmetric exciton condensation and time-reversal symmetry breaking Zeeman effect. There are two phases, quantum spin Hall phase and quantum anomalous Hall phase, and both phases support fractional excitations. We derive an effective topological field theory for the fractional excitations and examine the origin of the fractional excitations. Next we consider the relatives of the topological insulators. First we discuss the proximate symmetry broken phases of topological Mott insulator, a U(1) spin liquid with fermionic spinons in the topological insulator state. The topologically non-trivial band structure of the spinon generates the axion term for the gauge field, and we show that the axion term changes the nature of the confined phase of the spin liquid. Contrast to the conventional confined phase which has only a bond order, the confined phase of the spin liquid is in general a coexisting phase of the two different orders : a current order and a bond order. We then consider another relative of the topological insulator: a bosonic symmetry protected topological phase in two dimensional space, with both PSU(N) and time reversal symmetry. We develop an effective field theory for the phase, which is a SU(N) principal chiral model with a theta-term, and reveal the physics of the topological phase in detail.Finally we consider a topological semimetal, namely a Weyl semimetal. We first demonstrate that the Weyl semimetal can be realized in the magnetically doped topological band insulators. We explicitly derive the low energy theory of Weyl points from the general continuum Hamiltonian and tight-binding model of the topological insulators. Then we study superconducting instabilities of doped Weyl semimetals. We consider a minimal model for a Weyl semimetal and study the superconducting instabilities induced by a short-ranged attractive interaction. With the interaction, we find two competing states: a fully gapped finite-momentum pairing state and a nodal even-parity pairing state. We show that, in a mean field approximateion, the finite-momentum pairing state wins energetically against the usual even-parity paired state. We also show that exotic modes are localized at the full and half quantum vortices of the finite-momentum pairing state.