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    Parity anomaly and its transport signatures in three-dimensional chiral topological phases

    Yu-Hao Wan1,*, Yanmiao Han2, Rundong Zhao2, and Qing-Feng Sun1,3,†

    • *Contact author: wanyh@stu.pku.edu.cn
    • †Contact author: sunqf@pku.edu.cn

    Phys. Rev. B 114, 055412 – Published 13 July, 2026

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/p7dw-19m2

    Abstract

    The parity anomaly of a single massless Dirac fermion in (2+1) dimensions produces a half-quantized Hall conductance, a phenomenon recently confirmed on the surface of three-dimensional (3D) Z2 topological insulators. Whether and how this anomaly generalizes to 3D topological phases carrying an integer winding number W has remained an open question. Here, we address this problem for 3D chiral topological systems in the Altland-Zirnbauer symmetry classes AIII and DIII. By constructing minimal lattice models, we show that the winding number fixes the net chirality of the boundary Dirac or Majorana cones. By introducing a time-reversal-breaking surface mass to provide the necessary high-energy regularization, we explicitly expose their intrinsic parity anomaly. Through a layer-resolved Chern-number analysis, we establish a macroscopic topological magnitude law, |Csurf|=|W|/2, revealing that the shared chirality enforces a constructive accumulation of the fractional topological charges. We further demonstrate that this amplified anomaly coefficient is unambiguously readable in transport: a four-terminal setup in class AIII yields a quantized transmission asymmetry |ΔT|=|W|/2, while a six-terminal thermal Hall measurement in class DIII topological superconductors gives |κxysurf|=|W|/4κ0. Notably, this thermal signature remains strictly robust against 3D Anderson disorder. Our results establish that the bulk winding number universally controls the macroscopic surface parity-anomaly coefficient in 3D chiral topological phases, providing concrete transport protocols for its detection in artificial metamaterial platforms and topological superconductor candidates.

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