Amorphous topological phases protected by continuous rotation symmetry

Protection of topological surface states by reflection symmetry breaks down when the boundary of the sample is misaligned with one of the high symmetry planes of the crystal. We demonstrate that this limitation is removed in amorphous topological materials, where the Hamiltonian is invariant on aver...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:SciPost physics 2021-08, Vol.11 (2), p.022, Article 022
Hauptverfasser: Spring, Helene, Akhmerov, Anton, Varjas, Daniel
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
Online-Zugang:Volltext
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Protection of topological surface states by reflection symmetry breaks down when the boundary of the sample is misaligned with one of the high symmetry planes of the crystal. We demonstrate that this limitation is removed in amorphous topological materials, where the Hamiltonian is invariant on average under reflection over any axis due to continuous rotation symmetry. We show that the edge remains protected from localization in the topological phase, and the local disorder caused by the amorphous structure results in critical scaling of the transport in the system. In order to classify such phases we perform a systematic search over all the possible symmetry classes in two dimensions and construct the example models realizing each of the proposed topological phases. Finally, we compute the topological invariant of these phases as an integral along a meridian of the spherical Brillouin zone of an amorphous Hamiltonian.
ISSN:2542-4653
2542-4653
DOI:10.21468/SciPostPhys.11.2.022