Magnetic band representations, Fu-Kane-like symmetry indicators and magnetic topological materials

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive theoretical framework and computational tools to classify and identify magnetic topological materials using symmetry indicators derived from magnetic band representations and quantum chemistry principles.

Contribution

It introduces a complete set of magnetic band representations and Fu-Kane-like symmetry indicators, along with an automated code for diagnosing magnetic topological materials.

Findings

Many magnetic compounds are identified as topological candidates.

The framework is consistent with existing magnetic topological quantum chemistry.

The code enables efficient screening of magnetic topological materials.

Abstract

To realize novel topological phases and to pursue potential applications in low-energy consumption spintronics, the study of magnetic topological materials is of great interest. Starting from the theory of nonmagnetic topological quantum chemistry [Bradlyn et al., Nature 547, 298 (2017)], we have obtained irreducible (co)representations and compatibility relations (CRs) in momentum space, and we constructed a complete list of magnetic band (co)representations (MBRs) in real space for other MSGs with anti-unitary symmetries (i.e. type-III and type-IV MSGs). The results are consistent with the magnetic topological quantum chemistry [Elcoro et al., Nat. Comm. 12, 5965 (2021)]. Using the CRs and MBRs, we reproduce the symmetry-based classifications for MSGs, and we obtain a set of Fu-Kane-like formulas of symmetry indicators (SIs) in both spinless (bosonic) and spinful (fermionic) systems, which are implemented in an automatic code - TopMat - to diagnose topological magnetic materials. The magnetic topological materials, whose occupied states can not be decomposed into a sum of MBRs, are consistent with nonzero SIs. Lastly, using our online code, we have performed spin-polarized calculations for magnetic compounds in the materials database and find many magnetic topological candidates.