arXivDaily arXiv每日学术速递 周一至周五更新
arXiv 2004.11390cond-mat.mes-hall
收藏

高阶拓扑绝缘体中向错缺陷处俘获分数电荷和拓扑态的观测

Observation of trapped fractional charge and topological states at disclination defects in higher-order topological insulators

Christopher W. Peterson, Tianhe Li, Wentao Jiang, Taylor L. Hughes, Gaurav Bahl

摘要:

拓扑晶体绝缘体(TCI)可以表现出独特的、量子化的电学现象,如分数电极化的强度和边界局域分数电荷。这种量化的分数电荷是用于识别缺乏稳健光谱特征(包括具有高阶拓扑结构的特征)的TCI的通用可观察量。已经预测,分数电荷也可以在晶体缺陷破坏TCIs的晶格结构的情况下显现,从而潜在地提供晶体拓扑结构的本体探针。然而,这种能力尚未得到证实,在实验中,因为测量的电荷分布在TCIs一直没有访问,直到最近。在这里,我们实验证明,向错缺陷可以强大的陷阱分数电荷在TCI超材料,并表明,这种被困的电荷可以指示非平凡的高阶晶体拓扑结构,即使在没有任何光谱签名。此外,我们发现了被困电荷和拓扑束缚态的存在之间的连接定位在这些缺陷。我们测试这些拓扑特征的鲁棒性时,保护晶体对称性被打破,并发现一个单一的强大的束缚态可以定位在每个向错旁边的分数电荷。我们的研究结果表明,向错缺陷在TCIs中可以鲁棒地捕获分数电荷以及拓扑束缚态,并进一步证明分数电荷作为晶体拓扑探针的首要地位。

英文摘要:

Topological crystalline insulators (TCIs) can exhibit unique, quantized electric phenomena such as fractional electric polarization and boundary-localized fractional charge. This quantized fractional charge is the generic observable for identification of TCIs that lack robust spectral features, including ones having higher-order topology. It has been predicted that fractional charges can also manifest where crystallographic defects disrupt the lattice structure of TCIs, potentially providing a bulk probe of crystalline topology. However, this capability has not yet been confirmed in experiment since measurements of charge distributions in TCIs have not been accessible until recently. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that disclination defects can robustly trap fractional charges in TCI metamaterials, and show that this trapped charge can indicate non-trivial higher-order crystalline topology even in the absence of any spectral signatures. Furthermore, we uncover a connection between the trapped charge and the existence of topological bound states localized at these defects. We test the robustness of these topological features when the protective crystalline symmetry is broken, and find that a single robust bound state can be localized at each disclination alongside the fractional charge. Our results conclusively show that disclination defects in TCIs can robustly trap fractional charges as well as topological bound states, and moreover demonstrate the primacy of fractional charge as a probe of crystalline topology.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

↑