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Disordered topological crystalline phases

Adam Yanis Chaou1, Mateo Moreno-Gonzalez2, Alexander Altland2, and Piet W. Brouwer1

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Phys. Rev. B 112, 035167 – Published 28 July, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/fpc3-bsz6

Abstract

The imposition of crystalline symmetries is known to lead to a rich variety of insulating and superconducting topological phases. These include higher-order topological phases and obstructed atomic limits with and without filling anomalies. We here comprehensively classify such topological crystalline phases (TCPs) with mirror, twofold rotation, and inversion symmetries in the presence of disorder that preserves the crystalline symmetry on average. We find that the inclusion of disorder leads to a simplification of the classification in comparison to the clean case. We also find that, while clean TCPs evade a general bulk-boundary principle, disordered TCPs admit a complete bulk-boundary correspondence, according to which (bulk) topological phases are topologically equivalent if and only if they have the same anomalous boundary states and filling anomaly. We corroborate the stability of disordered TCPs by way of field-theoretic, numerical, and symmetry-based analyses in various case studies. While the boundary signatures of most disordered TCPs are similar to their clean counterparts, the addition of disorder to certain mirror-symmetric TCPs results in novel higher-order statistical topological phases, in which zero-energy hinge states have critical wave-function statistics, while remaining protected from Anderson localization.

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Phys. Rev. B 112, 035167– Published 28 July, 2025
  • Received 30 December 2024
  • Revised 8 April 2025
  • Accepted 6 May 2025
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