Transition from metal to higher-order topological insulator driven by random flux

Abstract

Random flux is commonly believed to be incapable of driving full metal-insulator transitions in non-interacting systems. Here we show that random flux can after all induce a full metal-band insulator transition in the two-dimensional Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model. Remarkably, we find that the resulting insulator can be an extrinsic higher-order topological insulator with zero-energy corner modes in proper regimes, rather than a conventional Anderson insulator. Employing both level statistics and finite-size scaling analysis, we characterize the metal-band insulator transition and numerically extract its critical exponent as $\nu =2.48\pm 0.08$. To reveal the physical mechanism underlying the transition, we present an effective band structure picture based on the random flux averaged Green's function.

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• Generalized Lieb's theorem for noninteracting non-Hermitian $n$-partite tight-binding lattices
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• Topological Anderson insulators by latent symmetry
• Transport in honeycomb lattice with random $\pi$-fluxes: implications for low-temperature thermal transport in the Kitaev spin liquids
• The Quadrupole Moment of Higher-Order Topological Insulator at Finite temperature
• Breakdown of the symmetry constraint in a Floquet topological insulator
• An invariant measure of chiral quantum transport