Parity anomaly and its transport signatures in three-dimensional chiral topological phases
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 dimensions produces a half-quantized Hall conductance, a phenomenon recently confirmed on the surface of three-dimensional (3D) topological insulators. Whether and how this anomaly generalizes to 3D topological phases carrying an integer winding number 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, , 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 , while a six-terminal thermal Hall measurement in class DIII topological superconductors gives . 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.