Anderson Critical Metal Phase in Trivial States Protected by Average Magnetic Crystalline Symmetry

Abstract

Transitions between distinct obstructed atomic insulators (OAIs) protected by crystalline symmetries, where electrons form molecular orbitals centering away from the atom positions, must go through an intermediate metallic phase. In this work, we find that the intermediate metals will become a scale-invariant critical metal phase (CMP) under certain types of quenched disorder that respect the magnetic crystalline symmetries on average. We explicitly construct models respecting average $C_{2z}T$, $m$, and $C_{4z}T$ and show their scale-invariance under chemical potential disorder by the finite-size scaling method. Conventional theories, such as weak anti-localization and topological phase transition, cannot explain the underlying mechanism. A quantitative mapping between lattice and network models shows that the CMP can be understood through a semi-classical percolation problem. Ultimately, we systematically classify all the OAI transitions protected by (magnetic) groups $Pm$, $P{2}^{\prime }$, $P{4}^{\prime }$, and $P{6}^{\prime }$ with and without spin-orbit coupling, most of which can support CMP.

References in corpus (22)

• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Classification of topological insulators and superconductors in three spatial dimensions
• Topological Crystalline Insulators
• $(d-2)$-dimensional edge states of rotation symmetry protected topological states
• Reflection symmetric second-order topological insulators and superconductors
• Antiferromagnetic topological insulators
• Impurity effect on weak anti-localization in the topological insulator Bi2Te3
• Magnetic Topological Quantum Chemistry
• Entanglement Spectrum of a Disordered Topological Chern Insulator
• Surface State Magnetization and Chiral Edge States on Topological Insulators
• Tunable Surface Conductivity in Bi2Se3 Revealed in Diffusive Electron Transport
• Experimental Observation of Higher-Order Topological Anderson Insulators
• Topological Phase Transitions in Disordered Electric Quadrupole Insulators
• Average Symmetry-Protected Topological Phases
• Structural Disorder Induced Second-order Topological Insulators in Three Dimensions
• Application of topological quantum chemistry in electrides
• Anderson localization and the topology of classifying spaces
• Critical Behavior and Universal Signature of an Axion Insulator State
• Hofstadter Topology with Real Space Invariants and Reentrant Projective Symmetries
• Disorder-Induced Quantum Phase Transitions in Three-Dimensional Second-Order Topological Insulators
• Delocalization Transition of Disordered Axion Insulator
• Transition from metal to higher-order topological insulator driven by random flux

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Disorder-induced topological quantum phase transitions in multi-gap Euler semimetals
• Random-Flux-Induced Transition Sequence between Weak and Strong Topological Phases with Anisotropic Localization Properties
• Half-Quantized Hall Metal and Marginal Metal in Disordered Magnetic Topological Insulators
• Marginal Metals and Kosterlitz-Thouless Type Phase Transition in Disordered Altermagnets
• Disorder-induced delocalization and reentrance in a Chern-Hopf insulator
• Design and characterization of all two-dimensional fragile topological bands
• Interlayer Exchange Coupling-Induced Critical-Metal-to-Insulator Phase Transition in Quantum Anomalous Hall Insulators