Bosonic Bott Index and Disorder-Induced Topological Transitions of Magnons

TL;DR

This paper introduces a bosonic Bott index to analyze the effects of disorder on topological magnon phases in deformed honeycomb ferromagnets, revealing disorder-induced topological transitions and robustness of edge states.

Contribution

It develops a bosonic Bott index for disordered magnon systems and demonstrates disorder-driven topological phase transitions analogous to topological Anderson insulators.

Findings

Bott index matches Chern number in clean limit

Topologically protected edge states are robust to moderate disorder

Disorder can induce nontrivial topological phases in magnons

Abstract

We investigate the role of disorder on the various topological magnonic phases present in deformed honeycomb ferromagnets. To this end, we introduce a bosonic Bott index to characterize the topology of magnon spectra in finite, disordered systems. The consistency between the Bott index and Chern number is numerically established in the clean limit. We demonstrate that topologically protected magnon edge states are robust to moderate disorder and, as anticipated, localized in the strong regime. We predict a disorder-driven topological phase transition, a magnonic analog of the "topological Anderson insulator" in electronic systems, where the disorder is responsible for the emergence of the nontrivial topology. Combining the results for the Bott index and transport properties, we show that bulk-boundary correspondence holds for disordered topological magnons. Our results open the door for research on topological magnonics as well as other bosonic excitations in finite and disordered systems.