Quantum phase transitions of topological insulators without gap closing

Abstract

We consider two-dimensional Chern insulators and time-reversal invariant topological insulators and discuss the effect of perturbations breaking either particle-number conservation or time-reversal symmetry. The appearance of trivial mass terms is expected to cause quantum phase transitions into trivial phases when such a perturbation overweights the topological term. These phase transitions are usually associated with a bulk-gap closing. In contrast, the chiral Chern insulator is unaffected by particle-number breaking perturbations. Moreover, the ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ topological insulator undergoes phase transitions into topologically trivial phases without bulk-gap closing in the presence of any of such perturbations. In certain cases, these phase transitions can be circumvented and the protection restored by another U(1) symmetry, e.g. due to spin conservation. These findings are discussed in the context of interacting topological insulators.

v3: 15 pages, 5 figures; refs. added - final version

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Cited by in corpus (9)

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• Exact edge, bulk and bound states of finite topological systems
• Coexistence of metallic edge states and anti-ferromagnetic ordering in correlated topological insulators
• Influence of point defects on the electronic and topological properties of monolayer WTe${}_2$
• Optimizing Topological Switching in Confined 2D-Xene Nanoribbons via Finite-Size Effects
• Impact of magnetic dopants on magnetic and topological phases in magnetic topological insulators
• First-order quantum phase transitions as condensations in the space of states
• Topological Gap Opening without Symmetry Breaking from Dynamical Quantum Correlations
• Comparing the effective enhancement of local and non-local spin-orbit couplings on honeycomb lattices due to strong electronic correlations