Structural spillage: an efficient method to identify non-crystalline topological materials

Abstract

While topological materials are not restricted to crystals, there is no efficient method to diagnose topology in non-crystalline solids such as amorphous materials. Here we introduce the structural spillage, a new indicator that predicts the unknown topological phase of a non-crystalline solid, which is compatible with first-principles calculations. We illustrate its potential with tight-binding and first-principles calculations of amorphous bismuth, predicting a bilayer to be a new topologically nontrivial material. Our work opens up the efficient prediction of non-crystalline solids via first-principles and high-throughput searches.

6+18 pages, 4+8 figures

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Higher-order topological phases in crystalline and non-crystalline systems: a review
• Tutorial: Classifying Photonic Topology Using the Spectral Localizer and Numerical $K$-Theory
• Theory of local ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ topological markers for finite and periodic two-dimensional systems
• Fluctuations and Correlations of Local Topological Order Parameters in Disordered Two-dimensional Topological Insulators
• Topological band insulators without translational symmetry
• Aharanov-Bohm oscillations and perfectly transmitted mode in amorphous topological insulator nanowires
• Real-space formulation of the Chern invariant and topological phases in a disordered Chern insulator
• Non-self-averaging topological Anderson insulator