Bulk characterization of topological crystalline insulators: stability under interactions and relations to symmetry enriched U(1) quantum spin liquids

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the stability of various topological crystalline insulators under interactions and explores their connections to symmetry enriched U(1) quantum spin liquids using bulk properties and surface state analysis.

Contribution

It provides a direct bulk analysis showing the stability of several TCIs under interactions and elucidates their relations to U(1) quantum spin liquids with crystalline and internal symmetries.

Findings

All studied TCIs have nontrivial monopoles, indicating stability under interactions.

Methods involving surface states effectively determine monopole properties.

TCIs are related to U(1) QSLs with crystalline and internal symmetries.

Abstract

Topological crystalline insulators (TCIs) are nontrivial quantum phases of matter protected by crystalline (and other) symmetries. They are originally predicted by band theories, so an important question is their stability under interactions. In this paper, by directly studying the physical bulk properties of several band-theory-based nontrivial TCIs that are conceptually interesting and/or experimentally feasible, we show they are stable under interactions. These TCIs include (1) a weak topological insulator, (2) a TCI with a mirror symmetry and its time-reversal symmetric generalizations, (3) a doubled topological insulator with a mirror symmetry, and (4) two TCIs with symmetry-enforced-gapless surfaces. We describe two complementary methods that allow us to determine the properties of the magnetic monopoles obtained by coupling these TCIs to a U(1) gauge field. These methods involve studying different types of surface states of these TCIs. Applying these methods to our examples, we find all of them have nontrivial monopoles, which proves their stability under interactions. Furthermore, we discuss two levels of relations between these TCIs and symmetry enriched U(1) quantum spin liquids (QSLs). First, these TCIs are directly related to U(1) QSLs with crystalline symmetries. Second, there is an interesting correspondence between U(1) QSLs with crystalline symmetries and U(1) QSLs with internal symmetries. In particular, the TCIs with symmetry-enforced-gapless surfaces are related to the "fractional topological paramagnets" introduced in Ref. 1 by Zou et al.