Thursday, December 13, 2012

1212.2673 (Shunji Matsuura et al.)

Protected boundary states in gapless topological phases    [PDF]

Shunji Matsuura, Po-Yao Chang, Andreas P. Schnyder, Shinsei Ryu
We systematically study gapless topological phases of (semi-)metals and nodal superconductors described by Bloch and Bogoliubov-de Gennes Hamiltonians. Using K-theory, a classification of topologically stable Fermi surfaces in (semi-)metals and nodal lines in superconductors is derived. We discuss a generalized bulk-boundary correspondence that relates the topological features of the Fermi surfaces and superconducting nodal lines to the presence of protected zero-energy states at the boundary of the system. Depending on the case, the boundary states are either linearly dispersing (i.e., Dirac or Majorana states) or are dispersionless, forming two-dimensional surface flat bands or one-dimensional arc surface states. We study examples of gapless topological phases in symmetry class AIII and DIII, focusing in particular on nodal superconductors, such as non-centrosymmetric superconductors. For some cases we explicitly compute the surface spectrum and examine the signatures of the topological boundary states in the surface density of states.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.2673

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