Recent progress on disorder-induced topological phases

TL;DR

This review summarizes recent theoretical and experimental advances in disorder-induced topological phases, including topological Anderson insulators and their extensions in various complex systems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of disorder-induced topological phases across condensed matter and artificial systems, highlighting new phenomena and future research directions.

Findings

Topological Anderson insulators can be induced by disorder in trivial phases.

Extensions include quasiperiodic and non-Hermitian systems with unique localization.

Disorder-induced topology observed in dynamical and many-body systems.

Abstract

Topological states of matter in disordered systems without translation symmetry have attracted great interest in recent years. These states with topological characters are not only robust against certain disorders, but also can be counterintuitively induced by disorders from a topologically trivial phase in the clean limit. In this review, we summarize the current theoretical and experimental progress on disorder-induced topological phases in both condensed-matter and artificial systems. We first introduce the topological Anderson insulators (TAIs) induced by random disorders and their topological characterizations and experimental realizations. We then discuss various extensions of TAIs with unique localization phenomena in quasiperiodic and non-Hermitian systems. We also review the theoretical and experimental studies on the disorder-induced topology in dynamical and many-body systems, including topological Anderson-Thouless pumps, disordered correlated topological insulators and average-symmetry protected topological orders acting as interacting TAI phases. Finally, we conclude the review by highlighting potential directions for future explorations.