arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Guo Chuan Thiang.
We prove that Chern insulators have topologically protected edge states which not only propagate unidirectionally along a straight line boundary, but also swerve around arbitrary-angled corners and geometric imperfections of the material boundary. This is a physical manifestation of the index theory of certain semigroup operator algebras.
For a large class of physically relevant operators on a manifold with discrete group action, we prove general results on the (non-)existence of a basis of smooth well-localised Wannier functions for their spectral subspaces. This turns out to be equivalent to the freeness of a certain Hilbert module over the group $C^*$-algebra canonically associated to the spectral subspace. This brings into play $K$-theoretic methods and justifies their importance as invariants of topological insulators in physics.
We propose a topological characterization of Hamiltonians describing classical waves. Applying it to the magnetostatic surface spin waves that are important in spintronics applications, we settle the speculation over their topological origin. For a class of classical systems that includes spin waves driven by dipole-dipole interactions, we show that the topology is characterized by vortex lines in the Brillouin zone in such a way that the symplectic structure of Hamiltonian mechanics plays an essential role. We define winding numbers around these vortex lines and identify them to be the bulk topological invariants for a class of semimetals. Exploiting the bulk-edge correspondence appropriately reformulated for these classical waves, we predict that surface modes appear but not in a gap of the bulk frequency spectrum. This feature, consistent with the magnetostatic surface spin waves, indicates a broader realm of topological phases of matter beyond spectrally gapped ones.
We study topological phases in the hyperbolic plane using noncommutative geometry and T-duality, and show that fractional versions of the quantised indices for integer, spin and anomalous quantum Hall effects can result. Generalising models used in the Euclidean setting, a model for the bulk-boundary correspondence of fractional indices is proposed, guided by the geometry of hyperbolic boundaries.
We introduce the notion of crystallographic T-duality, inspired by the appearance of $K$-theory with graded equivariant twists in the study of topological crystalline materials. Besides giving a range of new topological T-dualities, it also unifies many previously known dualities, motivates generalisations of the Baum-Connes conjecture to graded groups, provides a powerful tool for computing topological phase classification groups, and facilitates the understanding of crystallographic bulk-boundary correspondences in physics.
A 2-torsion topological phase exists for Hamiltonians symmetric under the wallpaper group with glide reflection symmetry, corresponding to the unorientable cycle of the Klein bottle fundamental domain. We prove a mod 2 twisted Toeplitz index theorem, which implies a bulk-edge correspondence between this bulk phase and the exotic topological zero modes that it acquires along a boundary glide axis.
We provide a manifestly topological classification scheme for generalised Weyl semimetals, in any spatial dimension and with arbitrary Weyl surfaces which may be non-trivially linked. The classification naturally incorporates that of Chern insulators. Our analysis refines, in a mathematically precise sense, some well-known 3D constructions to account for subtle but important global aspects of the topology of semimetals. Using a fundamental locality principle, we derive a generalized charge cancellation condition for the Weyl surface components. We analyse the bulk-boundary correspondence under a duality transformation, which reveals explicitly the topological nature of the resulting surface Fermi arcs. We also analyse the effect of moving Weyl points on the bulk and boundary topological semimetal invariants.
We state and prove a general result establishing that T-duality simplifies the bulk-boundary correspondence, in the sense of converting it to a simple geometric restriction map. This settles in the affirmative several earlier conjectures of the authors, and provides a clear geometric picture of the correspondence. In particular, our result holds in arbitrary spatial dimension, in both the real and complex cases, and also in the presence of disorder, magnetic fields, and H-flux. These special cases are relevant both to String Theory and to the study of the quantum Hall effect and topological insulators with defects in Condensed Matter Physics.
In semimetals with time-reversal symmetry, the interplay between Weyl points and Fu-Kane-Mele indices results in coexisting surface Dirac cones and Fermi arcs that are transmutable without a topological phase transition. We show that Weyl points act as a new type of monopole, and that their connectivity is essential for capturing the full topology of semimetals and their role as intermediaries of topological insulator transitions. The history of Weyl point creation-annihilation provides a simple and mathematically equivalent way to classify semimetals, and directly prefigures the surface state topology. We further predict the possibility of a topological Dirac cone on the interface between two Weyl semimetals.
The subtle interplay between local and global charges for topological semimetals exactly parallels that for singular vector fields. Part of this story is the relationship between cohomological semimetal invariants, Euler structures, and ambiguities in the torsion of manifolds. Dually, a topological semimetal can be represented by Euler chains from which its surface Fermi arc connectivity can be deduced. These dual pictures, and the link to topological invariants of insulators, are organised using geometric exact sequences. We go beyond Dirac-type Hamiltonians and introduce new classes of semimetals whose local charges are subtle Atiyah-Dupont-Thomas invariants globally constrained by the Kervaire semicharacteristic, leading to the prediction of torsion Fermi arcs.
Recently we introduced T-duality in the study of topological insulators, and used it to show that T-duality trivialises the bulk-boundary correspondence in 2 dimensions. In this paper, we partially generalise these results to higher dimensions and briefly discuss the 4D quantum Hall effect.
Recently we introduced T-duality in the study of topological insulators. In this paper, we study the bulk-boundary correspondence for three phenomena in condensed matter physics, namely, the quantum Hall effect, the Chern insulator, and time reversal invariant topological insulators. In all of these cases, we show that T-duality trivializes the bulk-boundary correspondence.
We state a general conjecture that T-duality trivialises a model for the bulk-boundary correspondence in the parametrised context. We give evidence that it is valid by proving it in a special interesting case, which is relevant both to String Theory and to the study of topological insulators with defects in Condensed Matter Physics.
Topological insulators and D-brane charges in string theory can both be classified by the same family of groups. In this paper, we extend this connection via a geometric transform, giving a novel duality of topological insulators which can be viewed as a condensed matter analog of T-duality in string theory. For 2D Chern insulators, this duality exchanges the rank and Chern number of the valence bands.
Equivalence classes of gapped Hamiltonians compatible with given symmetry constraints, such as those underlying topological insulators, can be defined in many ways. For the non-chiral classes modelled by vector bundles over Brillouin tori, physically relevant equivalences include isomorphism, homotopy, and $K$-theory, which are inequivalent but closely related. We discuss an important subtlety which arises in the chiral Class AIII systems, where the winding number invariant is shown to be relative rather than absolute as is usually assumed. These issues are then analyzed and reconciled in the language of $K$-theory.
We present a rigorous and fully consistent $K$-theoretic framework for studying gapped topological phases of free fermions such as topological insulators. It utilises and profits from powerful techniques in operator $K$-theory. From the point of view of symmetries, especially those of time reversal, charge conjugation, and magnetic translations, operator $K$-theory is more general and natural than the commutative topological theory. Our approach is model-independent, and only the symmetry data of the dynamics, which may include information about disorder, is required. This data is completely encoded in a suitable $C^*$-superalgebra. From a representation-theoretic point of view, symmetry-compatible gapped phases are classified by the super-representation group of this symmetry algebra. Contrary to existing literature, we do not use $K$-theory to classify phases in an absolute sense, but only relative to some arbitrary reference. $K$-theory groups are better thought of as groups of obstructions between homotopy classes of gapped phases. Besides rectifying various inconsistencies in the existing literature on $K$-theory classification schemes, our treatment has conceptual simplicity in its treatment of all symmetries equally. The Periodic Table of Kitaev is exhibited as a special case within our framework, and we prove that the phenomena of periodicity and dimension shifts are robust against disorder and magnetic fields.
Complete sets of mutually unbiased bases are only known to exist in prime-power dimensions. We will describe a few approaches to the problem proving the (non)-existence of four mutually unbiased bases in dimension 6. These will include the notions of Grassmannian distance, quadratic matrix programming, semidefinite relaxations to polynomial programming, as well as various tools from algebraic geometry.
We investigate the problem of finding the optimal convex decomposition of a bipartite quantum state into a separable part and a positive remainder, in which the weight of the separable part is maximal. This weight is naturally identified with the degree of separability of the state. In a recent work, the problem was solved for two-qubit states using semidefinite programming. In this paper, we describe a procedure to obtain the optimal decomposition of a bipartite state of any finite dimension via a sequence of semidefinite relaxations. The sequence of decompositions thus obtained is shown to converge to the optimal one. This provides, for the first time, a systematic method to determine the so-called optimal Lewenstein-Sanpera decomposition of any bipartite state. Numerical results are provided to illustrate this procedure, and the special case of rank-2 states is also discussed.