The edge spectrum of Chern insulators with rough boundaries

Abstract

Chern insulators are periodic band insulators with the property that their projector onto the occupied bands have non-zero Chern number. Chern insulator with a homogeneous boundary display continuum spectrum that fills the entire insulating gap. The local density of states corresponding to this part of the spectrum is localized near the boundary, hence the terminology edge spectrum. An interesting question arises, namely, if a rough boundary, which can be seen as a strong random potential acting on these quasi 1-dimensional states, would destroy the continuum edge spectrum. This paper shows how such question can be answered via a newly formulated abstract framework in which the expectation value of the current of a general observable is connected to the index of a specific Fredholm operator. For the present application, we will connect the expectation value of the charge edge current with the index of a Fredholm operator that remains invariant under arbitrary deformations of the boundary.

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• Three-dimensional phase diagram of disordered HgTe/CdTe Quantum spin-Hall wells
• Topological phonon modes in filamentous structures
• Manifestly gauge independent formulations of the Z2 invariants
• Topologically Protected Extended States in Disordered Quantum Spin-Hall Systems without Time-Reversal Symmetry
• Effect of Strong Disorder on 3-Dimensional Chiral Topological Insulators: Phase Diagrams, Maps of the Bulk Invariant and Existence of Topological Extended Bulk States
• Suppressing backscattering of helical edge modes with a spin bath