Fractional Corner Charge of Sodium Chloride

TL;DR

This paper proposes sodium chloride as a three-dimensional octupole insulator with fractionally quantized corner charges, demonstrating their robustness against quantum fluctuations and defects, and suggesting feasible experimental observation.

Contribution

It introduces sodium chloride as a real material candidate for observing fractional corner charges related to higher-order topological phases.

Findings

Fractional corner charge of ±e/8 in NaCl.

Robustness of fractional charge against quantum fluctuations.

Persistence of corner charge signatures despite surface defects.

Abstract

Recent developments in higher-order topological phases have elucidated on the relationship between nontrivial multipole moments in the bulk and the emergence of fractionally quantized charges at the boundary. Here, we put on the table a proposal of the three-dimensional octupole insulator with fractionally quantized corner charges $\pm e/8$: sodium chloride, commonly known as table salt. The fractional quantization of the corner charge is unaffected by the quantum fluctuation of the electric charge per ion, as we demonstrate explicitly with ab initio calculations. We further show that the electrostatic signature of the fractional charge is well-preserved even when the ideal crystal is sprinkled with defects, and provide a systematic analysis on how the corner charge contribution could be isolated from the electric-field corrections originating from realistic surface relaxation. Our results suggest that the observation of corner charges from quantized multipole moments in solids might be around the corner.