Topological insulators. Dirac equation in condensed matters (Q694871)

The book is devoted to the study of a large family of topological insulators and superconductors based on the solutions of the Dirac equation, which the author believes to be `` a key to the door of topological insulators'' and ``a line that could thread all relevant topological phases from one to three dimensions and from insulators to superconductors or superfluids''. Further, ``this idea actually defines the scope of this book on topological insulators. For this reason, a lot of topics in topological insulators are actually not covered in this book, for example, the interacting systems and topological field theory.'' The book is divided into twelve chapters and two appendixes. The introductory Chapter 1 presents the confirmed topological phases including (i) all types of Hall effect, (ii) topological insulators generalizing quantum spin Hall effect, (iii) some superconductors and superfluid liquid helium. It is explained that each topological insulator or superconductor is governed by one Dirac equation. Chapter 2 shows that quadratic correction to the Dirac equation makes it topologically distinct. The solution of the bound states near the boundary and the calculation of the \(\mathbb{Z}^2\) index, which classifies the materials with time reversal invariance into strong and weak topological insulators, reflect the topology of the band structure of the system in 1D, 2D, and 3D. Chapter 3 presents a minimal lattice model for topological insulator in 1D, 2D, and 3D. This lattice model can be mapped into a continuous one near the critical point of topological quantum phase transition with unchanged topology of the lattice model if no energy gap in the band structure closes and reopens. Chapter 4 studies two classes of topological invariants proper for topological insulators: one is characterized by all integer elements and the other by the elements of the group \(\mathbb{Z}^2\) including \(0\) and \(1\) or \(1\) and \(-1\). The Bloch state, Berry phase and Chern number are considered, and it is shown that, if an insulator has additional inversion symmetry, there is a simplified algorithm to calculate the \(\mathbb{Z}^2\)-invariant. Moreover, a generalization of the \(\mathbb{Z}^2\)-invariant from 2D to 3D is given being the most important step in the development of a topological insulator. Chapter 5 describes polyacetylene on the base of two-band Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model and states that the polyacetylene has two distinct topological phases. Then, the corresponding Hamiltonians are stated for a description of the topological phases in a ferromagnet with spin-orbit coupling and a superconductor. Chapter 6 discusses quantum spin Hall effect in the corresponding system possessing a pair of helical edge states, which are characteristic of the 2D topological insulator. For the quantum spin Hall effect, in which an electric current can induce a transverse spin current or spin accumulation near the system boundary, different realizations and experimental methods for its measurement are considered. 3D topological insulators are presented in Chapter 7, which are characterized by the surrounding surface states, in which electrons are well-described as 2D Dirac fermions. First, for bulk structure the effective Hamiltonian for the surface states is derived based on the electronic model with further studying surface quantum Hall effect. Then, topological insulator thin films are studied, which can provide alternative way to realize the quantum spin Hall effect. Chapter 8 discusses a role of impurities and defects in topological insulators, which can be regarded as a boundary of the system forming the bound states around these topological features. As a result, the author studies these bound states near a single vacancy or defect (magnetic monopoles, vortex line or domain walls) in the bulk energy gap of topological insulators. Chapter 9 devoted to the study of topological phases in liquid helium, having the edge or surface states just like topological insulators, and spin-triplet superconductors being potential candidates in topological superconductors. The Majorana fermions, which can appear as an end-state in the 1D topological superconductor or a bound state induced by a half-quantized vortex in 2D topological superconductors, are presented in Chapter 10. Here, some models (in particular, Kitaev toy model, and Sau-Lutchyn-Tewari-Das Sarma model) for these elementary particles are considered which have not yet been realized in nature. The topological Anderson insulator is introduced in Chapter 11 also presenting its difference from the conventional topological insulator due to the existence of a mobility gap instead of a band gap in the system. From the viewpoint of time reversal symmetry, both phases can be described by the \(\mathbb{Z}^2\)-index and belong to the same topological class but the disorder breaks the translational invariance. They are different depending on whether the electrons in the bulk are localized or not. The final chapter discusses the symmetry classification for noninteracting electron systems covering all possible topological insulators and superconductors (each dimension has five possible topological phases). The considered symmetry types are chirality, particle-hole and time reversal. Two appendixes state two formulae for Hall conductance and consider the cases of time reversal for different systems. To sum up, this book combines clear physical approaches and strict mathematics. It is very interesting from a methodical viewpoint for teaching the modern physics of condensed matters.