Gapless insulating edges of dirty interacting topological insulators

Abstract

We demonstrate that a combination of disorder and interactions in a two-dimensional bulk topological insulator can generically drive its helical edge insulating. We establish this within the framework of helical Luttinger liquid theory and exact Emery-Luther mapping. The gapless glassy edge state spontaneously breaks time-reversal symmetry in a `spin glass' fashion, and may be viewed as a localized state of solitons which carry half integer charge. Such a qualitatively distinct edge state provides a simple explanation for heretofore puzzling experimental observations. This phase exhibits a striking non-monotonicity, with the edge growing less localized in both the weak and strong disorder limits.

6+6 pages and 5 figures, published version

References in corpus (15)

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Cited by in corpus (23)

• Interacting topological insulators: a review
• Average Symmetry-Protected Topological Phases
• Helical Liquids in Semiconductors
• Low-Temperature Conductivity of Weakly Interacting Quantum Spin Hall Edges in Strained-Layer InAs/GaInSb
• Current-induced gap opening in interacting topological insulator surfaces
• Charge density wave and finite-temperature transport in minimally twisted bilayer graphene
• Localization of Extended Quantum Objects
• Anomalous localization at the boundary of an interacting topological insulator
• Localization-Driven Correlated States of Two Isolated Interacting Helical Edges
• Temperature-driven gapless topological insulator
• Theory of coherent phase modes in insulating Josephson junction arrays
• Composite helical edges from Abelian fractional topological insulators
• Localized surfaces of three dimensional topological insulators
• Localization of the Helical Edge States in the Absense of External Magnetic Field
• Non-local finite-depth circuits for constructing SPT states and quantum cellular automata
• Robustness of Helical Edge States Under Edge Reconstruction
• Band manipulation and spin texture in interacting moiré helical edges
• Marginally localized edges of time-reversal symmetric topological superconductors
• Intrinsic (Axion) Statistical Topological Insulator
• Finite-temperature spectroscopy of dirty helical Luttinger liquids
• Dissipative Hot-spot Enabled Shock and Bounce Dynamics via Terahertz Quantum Quenches in Helical Edge States
• Edge Reconstruction in a Quantum Spin Hall Insulator
• Symmetric localization of ${\nu }_{\text{tot}}=4/3$ fractional topological insulator edges