T-duality simplifies bulk-boundary correspondence

Abstract: Recently we introduced T-duality in the study of topological insulators. In this paper, we study the bulk-boundary correspondence for three phenomena in condensed matter physics, namely, the quantum Hall effect, the Chern insulator, and time reversal invariant topological insulators. In all of these cases, we show that T-duality trivializes the bulk-boundary correspondence.

Review text

The paper is devoted to study the bulk-boundary correspondence for the three phenomena: the integer quantum Hall effect (IQHE), the Chern insulator, and the time-reversal invariant topological insulators. The bulk-boundary correspondence describes a correlation between certain topological features of the bulk description and those of boundary phenomena. The bulk-boundary correspondence is formulated as a topological boundary map associated to an extension of bulk algebra observables by boundary algebras. It is assumed that the bulk \(C^*\)-algebra \(\Xi\) arises as a crossed product of the codimension-1 boundary algebra \(\mathcal{J}\) by \(\mathbb{Z}\) and relates them through the associated Toeplitz extension. The Fermi projection for a bulk Hamiltonian defines an element of \(K_0(\Xi)\), which has a homomorphic image in \(K_1(\Xi)\) under the boundary map in \(K\)-theory. It is shown that the bulk-boundary homomorphism becomes trivialized under T-duality, introduced before as a tool to study topological insulators. A relatively complicated bulk-boundary map becomes a trivial map when viewed on the T-dual side. The authors develop non-commutative twisted and real versions of T-duality, and demonstrate the principle for (i) the integer quantum Hall effect, (ii) the Chern insulator, and (iii) the time-reversal invariant topological insulators. In the case of IQHE, the Riemannian metric is used for writing the Hamiltonian of an electron in an electromagnetic field with vector potential. In a real material, this Hamiltonian is modified by the addition of a real-valued potential. This Hamiltonian commutes with magnetic translations. In the case of the Chern insulator instead of the magnetic translational symmetry, the Hamiltonian has ordinary \(\mathbb{Z}^2\) translation invariance and ordinary Bloch-Floquet theory suffices for its analysis. The basic model of a Chern insulator is a two-band Hamiltonian in 2D. A family of models realizes a valence band with Chern numbers \(0, \pm1, \pm2\). For the time-reversal invariant (or T-invariant), the Hamiltonian is formulated on the Brillouin torus, and it includes an anti-unitary anti-involutary time-reversal operation \(T\) on the Bloch bundle, satisfying the commutation relation for the Bloch Hamiltonians. In the case (iii), real \(K\) \(R\)-theory or quaternionic \(K\) \(Q\)-theory groups are required, but T-duality simplifies the mathematical description by translating them to ordinary real \(K\) \(Q\)-theory groups. The Fu-Kane-Mele (FKM) invariant then is understood as the T-dual to the classical Stiefel-Whitney classes. These results illustrate the potential utility of T-duality in the field of topological insulators.

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