Topological surface States in three-dimensional magnetic insulators

An electron moving in a magnetically ordered background feels an effective magnetic field that can be both stronger and more rapidly varying than typical externally applied fields. One consequence is that insulating magnetic materials in three dimensions can have topologically nontrivial properties of the effective band structure. For the simplest case of two bands, these "Hopf insulators" are characterized by a topological invariant as in quantum Hall states and Z2 topological insulators, but instead of a Chern number or parity, the underlying invariant is the Hopf invariant that classifies maps from the three-sphere to the two-sphere. This Letter gives an efficient algorithm to compute whether a given magnetic band structure has nontrivial Hopf invariant, a double-exchange-like tight-binding model that realizes the nontrivial case, and a numerical study of the surface states of this model.     

Electrostatic field effects on three-dimensional topological insulators

Three-dimensional topological insulators are a new class of quantum matter which has interesting connections to nearly all main branches of condensed matter physics. In this article, we briefly review the advances in the field effect control of chemical potential in three-dimensional topological insulators. It is essential to the observation of many exotic quantum phenomena predicted to emerge from the topological insulators and their hybrid structures with other materials. We also describe various methods for probing the surface state transport. Some challenges in experimental study of electron transport in topological insulators will also be briefly discussed.     

Topological insulators in three dimensions

We study three-dimensional generalizations of the quantum spin Hall (QSH) effect. Unlike two dimensions, where a single Z2 topological invariant governs the effect, in three dimensions there are 4 invariants distinguishing 16 phases with two general classes: weak (WTI) and strong (STI) topological insulators. The WTI are like layered 2D QSH states, but are destroyed by disorder. The STI are robust and lead to novel "topological metal" surface states. We introduce a tight binding model which realizes the WTI and STI phases, and we discuss its relevance to real materials, including bismuth.     

Vortex Lines and Monopoles in Electrically Conducting Plasmas

Based on the φ-mapping topological current theory and the decomposition of gauge potential theory, the vortex lines and the monopoles in electrically conducting plasmas are studied. It is pointed out that these two topological structures respectively inhere in two-dimensional and three-dimensional topological currents, which can be derived from the same topological term n^→·（Эin^→×Эjn^→）, and both these topological structures axe characterized by the φ-mapping topological numbers-Hopf indices and Brouwer degrees. Furthermore, the spatial bifurcation of vortex lines and the generation and annihilation of monopoles are also discussed. At last, we point out that the Hopf invaxiant is a proper topological invaxiant to describe the knotted solitons.     

Quantum Deformation of Lattice Gauge Theory

A quantum deformation of 3-dimensional lattice gauge theory is defined by applying the Reshetikhin-Turaev functor to a Heegaard diagram associated to a given cell complex. In the root-of-unity case, the construction is carried out with a modular Hopf algebra. In the topological (weak-coupling) limit, the gauge theory partition function gives a 3-fold invariant, coinciding in the simplicial case with the Turaev-Viro one. We discuss bounded manifolds as well as links in manifolds. By a dimensional reduction, we obtain a q-deformed gauge theory on Riemann surfaces and find a connection with the algebraic Alekseev-Grosse-Schomerus approach. Received: 29 April 1996 / Accepted: 24 September 1996     

Topological insulator: Spintronics and quantum computations

Topological insulators are emergent states of quantum matter that are gapped in the bulk with timereversal symmetry-preserved gapless edge/surface states, adiabatically distinct from conventional materials. By proximity to various magnets and superconductors, topological insulators show novel physics at the interfaces, which give rise to two new areas named topological spintronics and topological quantum computation. Effects in the former such as the spin torques, spin-charge conversion, topological antiferromagnetic spintronics, and skyrmions realized in topological systems will be addressed. In the latter, a superconducting pairing gap leads to a state that supports Majorana fermions states, which may provide a new path for realizing topological quantum computation. Various signatures of Majorana zero modes/edge mode in topological superconductors will be discussed. The review ends by outlooks and potential applications of topological insulators. Topological superconductors that are fabricated using topological insulators with superconductors have a full pairing gap in the bulk and gapless surface states consisting of Majorana fermions. The theory of topological superconductors is reviewed, in close analogy to the theory of topological insulators.     

Quantum Spinor Structures for Quantum Spaces

A general theory of quantum spinor structures on quantum spaces is presented within the formalism of quantum principal bundles. Quantum analogs of basic objects of the classical theory are constructed: Laplace and Dirac operators, quantum versions of Clifford and spinor bundles, a Hodge *-operator, integration operators. Quantum phenomena are discussed, including an example of the Dirac operator associated to a quantum Hopf fibration.     

Tunable topological quantum states in three- and two-dimensional materials

We review our theoretical advances in tunable topological quantum states in three- and twodimensional materials with strong spin–orbital couplings. In three-dimensional systems, we propose a new tunable topological insulator, bismuth-based skutterudites in which topological insulating states can be induced by external strains. The orbitals involved in the topological band-inversion process are the d- and p-orbitals, unlike typical topological insulators such as Bi₂Se₃and BiTeI, where only the p-orbitals are involved in the band-inversion process. Owing to the presence of large d-electronic states, the electronic interaction in our proposed topological insulator is much stronger than that in other conventional topological insulators. In two-dimensional systems, we investigated 3d-transition-metal-doped silicene. Using both an analytical model and first-principles Wannier interpolation, we demonstrate that silicene decorated with certain 3d transition metals such as vanadium can sustain a stable quantum anomalous Hall effect. We also predict that the quantum valley Hall effect and electrically tunable topological states could be realized in certain transition-metal-doped silicenes where the energy band inversion occurs. These findings provide realistic materials in which topological states could be arbitrarily controlled.     

Topological Aspects of Triplet Superconductors

In this paper, using the Φ-mapping theory, it is shown that two kinds of topological defects, i.e., the vortex lines and the monopoles exist in the helical configuration of magnetic field in triplet superconductors. And the inner topological structure of these defects is studied. Because the knot solitons in the triplet superconductors are characterized by the Hopf invariant, we also establish a relationship between the Hopf invariant and the linking number of knots family, and reveal the inner topological structure of the Hopf invariant.     

A New Route to the Interpretation of Hopf Invariant

We discuss an object from algebraic topology, Hopf invariant, and reinterpret it in terms of the φ-mapping topological current theory. The main purpose of this paper is to present a new theoretical framework, which can directly give the relationship between Hopf invariant and the linking numbers of the higher dimensional submanifolds of Euclidean space R^2n-1. For the sake of this purpose we introduce a topological tensor current, which can naturally deduce the (n-1)-dimensional topological defect in R^2n-1 space. If these (n-1)-dimensional topological defects are closed oriented submanifolds of R^2n-1, they are just the (n-1)-dimensional knots. The linking number of these knots is well defined. Using the inner structure of the topological tensor current, the relationship between Hopf invariant and the linking numbers of the higher-dimensional knots can be constructed.     

Hopf fibration: Geodesics and distances

Here we study geodesics connecting two given points on odd-dimensional spheres respecting the Hopf fibration. This geodesic boundary value problem is completely solved in the case of three-dimensional sphere and some partial results are obtained in the general case. The Carnot–Carathéodory distance is calculated. We also present some motivations related to quantum mechanics.     

拓扑绝缘体电子态的电场调控

文章简要介绍了对拓扑绝缘体性质的电场控制,主要包括三维拓扑绝缘体表面磁性的电场控制、电子在p-n结中的类光输运行为以及拓扑绝缘体量子点的特性.     

Realistic time-reversal invariant topological insulators with neutral atoms

We lay out an experiment to realize time-reversal invariant topological insulators in alkali atomic gases. We introduce an original method to synthesize a gauge field in the near field of an atom chip, which effectively mimics the effects of spin-orbit coupling and produces quantum spin-Hall states. We also propose a feasible scheme to engineer sharp boundaries where the hallmark edge states are localized. Our multiband system has a large parameter space exhibiting a variety of quantum phase transitions between topological and normal insulating phases. Because of their remarkable versatility, cold-atom systems are ideally suited to realize topological states of matter and drive the development of topological quantum computing.     

Knot solitons in AFZ model

This paper studies the topological properties of knotted solitons in the (3+1)-dimensional Aratyn--Ferreira--Zimerman (AFZ) model. Topologically, these solitons are characterized by the Hopf invariant I, which is an integral class in the homotopy group π₃(S³)=Z. By making use of the decomposition of U(1) gauge potential theory and Duan's topological current theory, it is shown that the invariant is just the total sum of all the self-linking and linking numbers of the knot family while only linking numbers are considered in other papers. Furthermore, it is pointed out that this invariant is preserved in the branch processes (splitting, merging and intersection) of these knot vortex lines.     

Knotted Topological Phase Singularities of Electromagnetic Field

In this paper, knotted objects (RS vortices) in the theory of topological phase singularity in electromagnetic field have been investigated in details. By using the Duan's topological current theory, we rewrite the topological current form of RS vortices and use this topological current we reveal that the Hopf invariant of RS vortices is just the sum of the linking and self-linking numbers of the knotted RS vortices. Furthermore, the conservation of the Hopf invariant in the splitting, the mergence and the intersection processes of knotted RS vortices is also discussed.     

Monopoles and topological field theory

We present a topological quantum field theory for magnetic monopoles in an SU(N) Yang-Mills-Higgs model. This field theory is obtained by gauge fixing the topological action defining the monopole charge. This work extends to the three-dimensional case the quantization of invariant polynomials in four dimensions. We choose the Bogomolny self-duality equations as gauge conditions for the magnetic monopole topological field theory. In this way the geometrical equation discussed e.g. in Atiyah and Hitchin's work are recovered as ghost equations of motion. We give the cocycles of the corresponding topological symmetry. In the N→∞ limit interesting phenomena occur. The functional integration is forced to cover only the moduli space and the role of the ghosts stemming from the gauge fixing process is to provide a smooth semiclassical approximation.