- Letter
- Open Access
Unified characterization for higher-order topological phase transitions
Phys. Rev. Research 5, L022032 – Published 15 May, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L022032
Abstract
Higher-order topological phase transitions (HOTPTs) are associated with closing either the bulk energy gap (type-I) or boundary energy gap (type-II) without changing symmetry, and conventionally, both transitions are captured in real space and characterized separately. Here, we propose a momentum-space topological characterization of HOTPTs which unifies both types of topological transitions and enables a precise detection by quench dynamics. Our unified characterization is based on a correspondence between mass domain walls on real-space boundaries and higher-order band-inversion surfaces (BISs) which are characteristic interfaces in the momentum subspace. Topological transitions occur when momentum-space topological nodes, dubbed higher-order topological charges, cross the higher-order BISs after proper projection. Particularly, the bulk (boundary) gap closes when all (part of) topological charges cross the BISs, characterizing type-I (type-II) HOTPTs. These distinct dynamical behaviors of higher-order topological charges can be feasibly measured from quench dynamics driven with control in experiments. Our work opens an avenue to characterize and detect the two types of HOTPTs within a unified framework and shall advance research in both theory and experiments.
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- See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L022032 for details on (I) MDW-BIS duality and its applications, (II) HOTPTs, and (III) dynamical characterization in the 2D second-order, 3D second-order, and 3D third-order TIs, which includes Refs. [82, 86, 93, 99, 99, 100, 102].
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