Constructing a Weyl semimetal by stacking one dimensional topological phases

Abstract

Topological semimetals in three-dimensions (e.g. Weyl semimetal) can be built by stacking two dimensional topological phases. The interesting aspect of such a construction is that even though the topological building blocks in the low dimension may be gapped, the higher dimensional semimetallic phase emerges as a gapless critical point of a topological phase transition between two distinct insulating phases. In this work, we extend this idea by constructing three-dimensional topological semimetallic phases akin to Weyl systems by stacking one-dimensional Aubry-Andre-Harper (AAH) lattice tight binding models with non-trivial topology. The generalized AAH model is a family of one dimensional tight binding models with cosine modulations in both hopping and onsite energy terms. In this paper, we present a two-parameter generalization of the AAH model that can access topological phases in three dimensions within a unified framework. We show that the $\pi$-flux state of this two-parameter AAH model manifests three dimensional topological semimetallic phases where the topological features are embedded in one dimension. The topological nature of the band touching points of the semimetallic phase in 3D is explicitly established both analytically and numerically from the 1D perspective. This dimensional reduction provides a simple protocol to experimentally construct the three dimensional Brillouin zone of the topological semimetallic phases using `legos' of simple 1D double well optical lattices. We also propose Zak phase imaging of optical lattices as a tool to capture the topological nature of the band touching points. Our work provides a theoretical connection between the commensurate AAH model in 1D and Weyl semimetals in 3D, and points toward practical methods for the laboratory realization of such three dimensional topological systems in atomic optical lattices.

12 pages, 7 figures, Published version with revised title, introduction and improved presentation

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