We report that a spin-1/2 tetrahedral Heisenberg chain realizes a gapless symmetry-protected topological (gSPT) phase characterized by the coexistence of the Tomonaga-Luttinger-liquid criticality due to chirality degrees of freedom and the symmetry-protected edge state due to spin degrees of freedom. This gSPT phase has an interesting feature that no symmetry forbids the trivial spin gap opening but a discrete symmetry, $\mathbb Z_3\times\mathbb Z_2^T$, forbids the unique gapped ground state. In the first part of the paper, we numerically show the coexistence of a critical entanglement entropy and a nontrivially degenerate entanglement spectrum based on the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method.Next, we clarify that chirality degrees of freedom form the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid while spin degrees of freedom form the spin-1 Haldane state based on a degenerate perturbation theory. Last but not least, we discuss the Lieb-Schultz-Mattis-type ingappability in the gSPT phase, using a local $\mathbb{Z}_3$ rotation. We can thus characterize our gSPT phase as a symmetry-protected critical phase protected by the $\mathbb{Z}_3$ on-site symmetry, the $\mathbb{Z}_2^T$ time-reversal symmetry, the lattice translation symmetry, and the U(1) spin-rotation symmetry.
The non-regularizability of free fermion field theories, which is the root of various quantum anomalies, plays a central role in particle physics and modern condensed matter physics. In this paper, we generalize the Nielsen-Ninomiya theorem to all minimal nodal free fermion field theories protected by the time reversal, charge conservation, and charge conjugation symmetries. We prove that these massless field theories cannot be regularized on a lattice.
We study a three-leg spin-1/2 ladder with geometrically frustrated interleg interactions. We call this model an anisotropic triangular-strip (ATS) model. We numerically and field-theoretically show that its ground state belongs to a gapless symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase. The numerical approach is based on density-matrix renormalization group analyses of the entanglement entropy and the entanglement spectrum. Whereas the entanglement entropy exhibits a critical behavior, the entanglement spectrum is nontrivially degenerate. These entanglement properties imply that the ground state …
We present a quantum theory for one-dimensional spin-1/2 multiferroics, where the vector spin chirality couples with the electric polarization. Based on exact diagonalization and bosonization, it is shown that quantum fluctuations appreciably reduce the chiral ordering amplitude and the associated ferroelectric polarization. This yields nearly collinear spin correlations in short-range scales, in qualitative agreement with recent neutron scattering experiments. There appear gapless chirality excitations described by phasons and new solitons, which can be experimentally verified from the low-en…
Symmetry protected topological states (SPTs) have the same symmetry and the phase transition between them are beyond Landau's symmetry breaking formalism. In this paper we study (1) the critical theory of phase transition between trivial and non-trivial SPTs, and (2) the relation between such critical theory and the gapless boundary theory of SPTs. Based on examples of SO(3) and SU(2) SPTs, we propose that under appropriate boundary condition the critical theory contains the delocalized version of the boundary excitations. In addition, we prove that the boundary theory is the critical theory s…
We show that the $ν=8$ integer quantum Hall state can support Majorana zero modes at domain walls between its two different stable chiral edge phases without superconductivity. This is due to the existence of an edge phase that does not support gapless fermionic excitations; all gapless excitations are bosonic in this edge phase. Majorana fermion zero modes occur at a domain wall between this edge phase and the more conventional one that does support gapless fermions. Remarkably, due to the chirality of the system, the topological degeneracy of these zero modes has exponential protection, as a…
Chiral three-spin interactions can suppress long-range magnetic order and stabilize quantum spin liquid states in frustrated lattices. We study a spin-1/2 model on the kagome lattice involving a staggered three-spin interaction $J_χ$ in addition to Heisenberg exchange couplings $J_1$ on nearest-neighbor bonds and $J_d$ across the diagonals of the hexagons. We explore the phase diagram using a combination of a classical approach, parton mean-field theory, and variational Monte Carlo methods. We obtain a variety of noncoplanar magnetic orders, including a phase that interpolates between cuboc-1 …
We introduce exactly solvable gapless quantum systems in $d$ dimensions that support symmetry protected topological (SPT) edge modes. Our construction leads to long-range entangled, critical points or phases that can be interpreted as critical condensates of domain walls "decorated" with dimension $(d-1)$ SPT systems. Using a combination of field theory and exact lattice results, we argue that such gapless SPT systems have symmetry-protected topological edge modes that can be either gapless or symmetry-broken, leading to unusual surface critical properties. Despite the absence of a bulk gap, t…
A 3d symmetry protected topological phase, by definition must have symmetry protected nontrivial boundary states, namely its 2d boundary must be either gapless or degenerate. In this work we demonstrate that once we couple a 3d SPT phase to a lattice dynamical Z2 gauge field, in many cases the Z2 vison loop excitation (line defect) can be viewed as a "1d boundary" of the 3d SPT phase, and this line defect is guaranteed to have gapless or degenerate spectrum, which is also protected by the symmetry of the SPT phase.
Topological insulators in free fermion systems have been well characterized and classified. However, it is not clear in strongly interacting boson or fermion systems what symmetry protected topological orders exist. In this paper, we present a model in a 2D interacting spin system with nontrivial on-site $Z_2$ symmetry protected topological order. The order is nontrivial because we can prove that the 1D system on the boundary must be gapless if the symmetry is not broken, which generalizes the gaplessness of Wess-Zumino-Witten model for Lie symmetry groups to any discrete symmetry groups. The …
Despite rapid progress in understanding gapped topological states, much less is known about gapless topological phases of matter, especially in strongly correlated electrons. In this work we discuss a large class of robust gapless quantum spin liquids in frustrated magnets made of half-integer spins, which are described by gapless fermionic spinons coupled to dynamical $Z_2$ gauge fields. Requiring $U(1)$ spin conservation, time reversal and certain space group symmetries, we show that certain spinon symmetry fractionalization class necessarily leads to a gapless spectrum. These gapless excita…
Recently there has been much effort in understanding topological phases of matter with gapless bulk excitations, which are characterized by topological invariants and protected intrinsic boundary states. Here we show that topological semimetals of Majorana fermions arise in exactly solvable Kitaev spin models on a series of three dimensional lattices. The ground states of these models are quantum spin liquids with gapless nodal spectra of bulk Majorana fermion excitations. It is shown that these phases are topologically stable as long as certain discrete symmetries are protected. The correspon…
We consider quantum many body systems with generalized symmetries, such as the higher form symmetries introduced recently, and the "tensor symmetry". We consider a general form of lattice Hamiltonians which allow a certain level of nonlocality. Based on the assumption of dual generalized symmetries, we explicitly construct low energy excited states. We also derive the 't Hooft anomaly for the general Hamiltonians after "gauging" the dual generalized symmetries. A 3d system with dual anomalous 1-form symmetries can be viewed as the boundary of a 4d generalized symmetry protected topological (SP…
By including a material-relevant off-diagonal interaction called the $Γ$ term into the Kitaev model and introducing spatial anisotropy in the interaction strength on the honeycomb lattice, we obtain a series of nodal Z$_2$ quantum spin liquids (QSLs) from parton approach. These QSLs share the same projective symmetry group and are characterized by certain numbers of symmetry-protected Majorana cones in their low-energy excitation spectrum. We illustrate that the physical properties of the QSLs are dependent on the information of the cones. Using the $\pmb k\cdot\pmb p$ method, we analyze the c…
The theoretical description of non-Fermi liquids is among the most challenging questions in strongly correlated quantum matter. While there are many experimental candidates for such phases, few examples can be studied using controlled theoretical approaches. Here we introduce a novel conceptual perspective to analytically describe the non-Fermi liquid physics of gapless spin liquids arising in a family of two- and three-dimensional Kagome models. We first discuss a symmetry-protection mechanism that is responsible for the stability of the gapless phase. We then re-cast the two-dimensional Kago…
We consider a one-dimensional, time-reversal-invariant system with attractive interactions and spin-orbit coupling. Such a system is gapless due to the strong quantum fluctuations of the superconducting order parameter. However, we show that a sharply defined topological phase with protected, exponentially localized edge states exists. If one of the spin components is conserved, the protection of the edge modes can be understood as a consequence of the presence of a spin gap. In the more general case, the localization of the edge states arises from a gap to single particle excitations in the b…
Symmetry protected topological (SPT) states are bulk gapped states with gapless edge excitations protected by certain symmetries. The SPT phases in free fermion systems, like topological insulators, can be classified by the K-theory. However, it is not known what SPT phases exist in general interacting systems. In this paper, we present a systematic way to construct SPT phases in interacting bosonic systems, which allows us to identify many new SPT phases, including three bosonic versions of topological insulators in three dimension and one in two dimension protected by particle number conserv…
Symmetry protected topological (SPT) states are short-range entangled states with symmetry. Nontrivial SPT states have symmetry protected gapless edge excitations. In 2-dimension (2D), there are infinite number of nontrivial SPT phases with SU(2) or SO(3) symmetry. These phases can be described by SU(2)/SO(3) nonlinear-sigma models with a quantized topological θ-term. At open boundary, the θ-term becomes the Wess-Zumino-Witten term and consequently the boundary excitations are decoupled gapless left movers and right movers. Only the left movers (if θ>0) carry the SU(2)/SO(3) quantum numbers. A…
Symmetry protected topological (SPT) states are short-range entangled states with symmetry, which have symmetry protected gapless edge states around a gapped bulk. Recently, we proposed a systematic construction of SPT phases in interacting bosonic systems, however it is not very clear what is the form of the low energy excitations on the gapless edge. In this paper, we answer this question for two dimensional bosonic SPT phases with Z_N and U(1) symmetry. We find that while the low energy modes of the gapless edges are non-chiral, symmetry acts on them in a chiral way, i.e. acts on the right …
Crystalline topological insulators owe their topological character to the protection that certain boundary states acquire because of certain point-group symmetries. We first show that a Hermitian operator obeying supersymmetric quantum mechanisms (SUSY QM) delivers the entanglement spectrum. We then show that such an entanglement spectrum that is compatible with a certain point-group symmetry obeys a certain local spectral symmetry. The latter result is applied to the stability analysis of four fermionic non-interacting Hamiltonians, the last of which describes graphene with a Kekule distortio…
We consider domain walls in nematic quantum Hall ferromagnets predicted to form in multivalley semiconductors, recently probed by scanning tunnelling microscopy experiments on Bi(111) surfaces. We show that the domain wall properties depend sensitively on the filling factor $ν$ of the underlying (integer) quantum Hall states. For $ν=1$ and in the absence of impurity scattering we argue that the wall hosts a single-channel Luttinger liquid whose gaplessness is a consequence of valley and charge conservation. For $ν=2$, it supports a two-channel Luttinger liquid, which for sufficiently strong in…
Symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases in free fermion and interacting bosonic systems have been classified, but the physical phenomena of interacting fermionic SPT phases have not been fully explored. Here, employing large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulation, we investigate the edge physics of a bilayer Kane-Mele-Hubbard model with zigzag ribbon geometry. Our unbiased numerical results show that the fermion edge modes are gapped out by interaction, while the bosonic edge modes remain gapless at the $(1+1)d$ boundary, before the bulk quantum phase transition to a topologically trivial ph…
Motivated by recent experiments probing anomalous surface states of Dirac semimetals (DSMs) Na$_3$Bi and Cd$_3$As$_2$, we raise the question posed in the title. We find that, in marked contrast to Weyl semimetals, the gapless surface states of DSMs are not topologically protected in general, except on time-reversal-invariant planes of surface Brillouin zone. We first demonstrate this in a minimal $4$-band model with a pair of Dirac nodes at ${\bf k}=(0,0,\pm Q)$, where gapless states on the side surfaces are protected only near $k_z=0$. We then validate our conclusions about the absence of a t…
Using a perturbative renormalization group approach, we show that the extended ($J_1$-$J_2$-$J_d$) Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice with a staggered chiral interaction ($J_χ$) can exhibit a gapless chiral quantum spin liquid phase. Within a coupled-chains construction, this phase can be understood as a chiral sliding Luttinger liquid with algebraic decay of spin correlations along the chain directions. We calculate the low-energy properties of this gapless chiral spin liquid using the effective field theory and show that they are compatible with the predictions from parton mean-field the…
We consider a spin-1/2 tube (a three-leg ladder with periodic boundary conditions) with a Hamiltonian given by two projection operators - one on the triangles, and the other on the square plaquettes on the side of the tube - that can be written in terms of Heisenberg and four-spin ring exchange interactions. We identify 3 phases: (i) for strongly antiferromagnetic exchange on the triangles, an exact ground state with a gapped spectrum can be given as an alternation of spin and chirality singlet bonds between nearest triangles; (ii) for ferromagnetic exchange on the triangles, we recover the ph…
We identify two-dimensional three-state Potts paramagnets with gapless edge modes on a triangular lattice protected by $(\times Z_3)^3\equiv Z_3\times Z_3\times Z_3$ symmetry and smaller $Z_3$ symmetry. We derive microscopic models for the gapless edge, uncover their symmetries, and analyze the conformal properties. We study the properties of the gapless edge by employing the numerical density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) simulation and exact diagonalization. We discuss the corresponding conformal field theory, its central charge, and the scaling dimension of the corresponding primary f…
Topological media are systems whose properties are protected by topology and thus are robust to deformations of the system. In topological insulators and superconductors the bulk-surface and bulk-vortex correspondence gives rise to the gapless Weyl, Dirac or Majorana fermions on the surface of the system and inside vortex cores. Here we show that in gapless topological media, the bulk-surface and bulk-vortex correspondence is more effective: it produces topologically protected gapless fermions without dispersion -- the flat band. Fermion zero modes forming the flat band are localized on the su…
The phase diagram of the classical \jj model on the \kag lattice is investigated using extensive \mc simulations. In a realistic range of parameters, this model has a low-temperature chiral-ordered phase without long-range spin order. We show that the critical transition marking the destruction of chiral order is preempted by the first order proliferation of \Zdeux point defects. The core energy of these vortices appears to vanish when approaching the T=0 phase boundary, where both \Zdeux defects and gapless magnons contribute to disordering the system at very low temperature. This situation m…
We argue that a relatively simple model containing only SU(2)-invariant chiral three-spin interactions on a Kagome lattice of S=1/2 spins can give rise to both a gapped and a gapless quantum spin liquid. Our arguments are rooted in a formulation in terms of network models of edge states and are backed up by a careful numerical analysis. For a uniform choice of chirality on the lattice, we realize the Kalmeyer-Laughlin state, i.e. a gapped spin liquid which is identified as the nu=1/2 bosonic Laughlin state. For staggered chiralities, a gapless spin liquid emerges which exhibits gapless spin ex…
Topology in quantum matter is typically associated with gapped phases. For example, in symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases, the bulk energy gap localizes edge modes near the boundary. In this work we identify a new mechanism that leads to topological phases which are not only gapless but where the absence of a gap is essential. These `intrinsically gapless SPT phases' have no gapped counterpart and are hence also distinct from recently discovered examples of gapless SPT phases. The essential ingredient of these phases is that on-site symmetries act in an anomalous fashion at low energi…
Knowledge of magnetic symmetry is vital for exploiting nontrivial surface states of magnetic topological materials. EuIn$_{2}$As$_{2}$ is an excellent example, as it is predicted to have collinear antiferromagnetic order where the magnetic moment direction determines either a topological-crystalline-insulator phase supporting axion electrodynamics or a higher-order-topological-insulator phase with chiral hinge states. Here, we use neutron diffraction, symmetry analysis, and density functional theory results to demonstrate that EuIn$_{2}$As$_{2}$ actually exhibits low-symmetry helical antiferro…
We present a series of models of three-dimensional rotation-symmetric fragile topological insulators in class AI (time-reversal symmetric and spin-orbit-free systems), which have gapless surface states protected by time-reversal ($T$) and $n$-fold rotation ($C_n$) symmetries ($n=2,4,6$). Our models are generalizations of Fu's model of a spinless topological crystalline insulator, in which orbital degrees of freedom play the role of pseudo-spins. We consider minimal surface Hamiltonian with $C_n$ symmetry in class AI and discuss possible symmetry-protected gapless surface states, i.e., a quadra…
Topological media are systems whose properties are protected by topology and thus are robust to deformations of the system. In topological insulators and superconductors the bulk-surface and bulk-vortex correspondence gives rise to the gapless Weyl, Dirac or Majorana fermions on the surface of the system and inside vortex cores. In gapless topological media, the bulk-surface and bulk-vortex correspondence produce topologically protected gapless fermions without dispersion - the flat band. Fermion zero modes forming the flat band are localized on the surface of topological media with protected …
Mechanical strain can generate a pseudo-magnetic field, and hence Landau levels (LL), for low energy excitations of quantum matter in two dimensions. We study the collective state of the fractionalised Majorana fermions arising from residual generic spin interactions in the central LL, where the projected Hamiltonian reflects the spin symmetries in intricate ways: emergent U(1) and particle-hole symmetries forbid any bilinear couplings, leading to an intrinsically strongly interacting system; also, they allow the definition of a filling fraction, which is fixed at 1/2. We argue that the result…
We study the magnetization plateau state of the three-leg spin-1/2 tube in the strong rung coupling region, where S_3-symmetry breakings and low-energy chirality degree of freedom play crucial roles. On the basis of the effective chirality model and density matrix renormalization group, we clarify that, as the leg coupling increases, the chirality liquid with gapless non-magnetic excitations, the spin imbalance phase and the vector-spin-chirality ordered phase emerge without closing the plateau spin gap. The relevance of these results to experiments is also discussed.
Symmetry protected topological phase is one type of nontrivial quantum disordered many-body state of matter. In this work we study one class of symmetry protected topological phases in two dimensional space, with both PSU(N) and time reversal symmetry. These states can be described by a principal chiral model with a topological Theta-term. As long as the time-reversal symmetry and PSU(N) symmetry are both preserved, the 1+1 dimensional boundary of this system must be either gapless or degenerate. We will also construct a wave function of a spin-1 system on the honeycomb lattice, which is a can…
AKLT state (or Haldane phase) in a spin-1 chain represents a large class of gapped topological paramagnets, which hosts symmetry-protected gapless excitations on the boundary. In this work we show how to realize this type of featureless spin-1 states on a generic two-dimensional lattice. These states have a gapped spectrum in the bulk but supports gapless edge states protected by spin rotational symmetry along a certain direction, and are featured by spin quantum Hall effect. Using fermion representation of integer-spins we show a concrete example of such spin-1 topological paramagnets on kago…
We construct and study a time reversal broken tight binding model on diamond lattice with complex next-nearest-neighbour hopping which can be thought of as a generalisation of two dimensional Haldane model in three dimension. The model also breaks inversion symmetry owing to sub-lattice dependent chemical potential. We calculate the spectrum of the model and find the existence of six pairs of anisotropic gapless points with linear dependence on momentum. The coordinates of the gapless points are ($2 π, π\pm k_0,0),~ (2 π, π\pm k_0,2 π)$ and their possible permutations . The condition for gaple…
We study a variety of questions related to entanglement in symmetry protected phases, especially those introduced in arXiv:1106.4772 (Chen et al., 2011). These phases are analogous to topological insulators in that they are short range entangled states with symmetry protected edge or surface states. We show that the now standard bulk-edge correspondence relating the entanglement spectrum to the gapless edge spectrum holds for these phases as well. We also consider the question of coupling these models to gauge fields or equivalently of introducing long range entanglement. We argue that this pr…
We introduce a systematic construction of a gapless symmetry protected topological phase in one dimension by "decorating" the domain walls of Luttinger liquids. The resulting strongly interacting phases provide a concrete example of a gapless symmetry protected topological (gSPT) phase with robust symmetry-protected edge modes. Using boundary conformal field theory arguments, we show that while the bulks of such gSPT phases are identical to conventional Luttinger liquids, their boundary critical behavior is controlled by a different, strongly-coupled renormalization group fixed point. Our resu…
We construct a 2D quantum spin model that realizes an Ising paramagnet with gapless edge modes protected by Ising symmetry. This model provides an example of a "symmetry-protected topological phase." We describe a simple physical construction that distinguishes this system from a conventional paramagnet: we couple the system to a Z_2 gauge field and then show that the π-flux excitations have different braiding statistics from that of a usual paramagnet. In addition, we show that these braiding statistics directly imply the existence of protected edge modes. Finally, we analyze a particular mic…
We analyze a diamond-lattice Hubbard model with the spatially modulated Hubbard interaction. Our dynamical mean-field analysis with special emphasis on non-Hermitian properties elucidates that the gapless nodal line changes into symmetry-protected exceptional torus (SPET) at the Fermi level enclosing the three-dimensional open Fermi surface, which is unique to non-Hermitian physics with chiral symmetry. Furthermore, we also elucidate the effects of the SPETs on the magnetic response; our results based on the random-phase approximation combined with the the dynamical mean-field theory shows tha…
Topological quantum matter is typically associated with gapped phases and edge modes protected by the bulk gap. In contrast, recent work (Phys. Rev. B 104, 075132) proposed intrinsically gapless topological phases that, in one dimension, carry protected edge modes only when the bulk is a gapless Luttinger liquid. The edge modes of such a topological Luttinger liquid (TLL) descend from a nonlocal string order that is forbidden in gapped phases and whose precise form depends on the symmetry class of the system. In this work, we propose a powerful and unbiased entanglement-based smoking gun signa…
Symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases are gapped quantum phases which host symmetry-protected gapless edge excitations. On the other hand, the edge states can be gapped by spontaneously breaking symmetry. We show that topological defects on the symmetry-broken edge cannot proliferate due to their fractional statistics. A gapped symmetric boundary, however, can be achieved between an SPT phase and certain fractionalized phases by condensing the bound state of a topological defect and an anyon. We demonstrate this by two examples in two dimensions: an exactly solvable model for the boundar…
Motivated by the recent discovery of the spin tube [(CuCl$_2$tachH)$_3$Cl]Cl$_2$, we investigate the properties of a frustrated three-leg spin tube with antiferromagnetic intra-ring and inter-ring couplings. We pay special attention to the evolution of the properties from weak to strong inter-ring coupling and show on the basis of extensive density matrix renormalization group and exact diagonalization calculations that the system undergoes a first-order phase transition between a dimerized gapped phase at weak coupling that can be described by the usual spin-chirality model and a gapless crit…
Motivated by recent progress in crystalline symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases of interacting bosons, we study topological crystalline insulators/superconductors (TCIs) of strongly interacting fermions. We construct a class of intrinsically interacting fermionic TCIs, and show that they are beyond both free-fermion TCIs and bosonic crystalline SPT phases. We also show how these phases can be characterized by symmetry protected gapless fermion modes on the corners/hinges of an open system.
Weyl and Dirac semimetals are three dimensional phases of matter with gapless electronic excitations that are protected by topology and symmetry. As three dimensional analogs of graphene, they have generated much recent interest. Deep connections exist with particle physics models of relativistic chiral fermions, and -- despite their gaplessness -- to solid-state topological and Chern insulators. Their characteristic electronic properties lead to protected surface states and novel responses to applied electric and magnetic fields. Here we review the theoretical foundations of these phases, the…
In this work, we introduce a new type of topological order which is protected by subsystem symmetries which act on lower dimensional subsets of lattice many-body system, e.g. along lines or planes in a three dimensional system. The symmetry groups for such systems exhibit a macroscopic number of generators in the infinite volume limit. We construct a set of exactly solvable models in $2d$ and $3d$ which exhibit such subsystem SPT (SSPT) phases with one dimensional subsystem symmetries. These phases exhibit analogs of phenomena seen in SPTs protected by global symmetries: gapless edge modes, pr…
