Topological insulators and the Kane-Mele invariant: obstruction and localization theory

DOI10.1142/S0129055X20500178zbMATH Open1455.81028arXiv1712.02991OpenAlexW2989711725WikidataQ126669047 ScholiaQ126669047MaRDI QIDQ5149196FDOQ5149196

Authors: Severin Bunk, Richard J. Szabo 

Publication date: 8 February 2021

Published in: Reviews in Mathematical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We present homotopy theoretic and geometric interpretations of the Kane-Mele invariant for gapped fermionic quantum systems in three dimensions with time-reversal symmetry. We show that the invariant is related to a certain 4-equivalence which lends it an interpretation as an obstruction to a block decomposition of the sewing matrix up to nonequivariant homotopy. We prove a Mayer-Vietoris Theorem for manifolds with $mathbb{Z}_2$-actions which intertwines Real and $mathbb{Z}_2$-equivariant de Rham cohomology groups, and apply it to derive a new localisation formula for the Kane-Mele invariant. This provides a unified cohomological explanation for the equivalence between the discrete Pfaffian formula and the known local geometric computations of the index for periodic lattice systems. We build on the relation between the Kane-Mele invariant and the theory of bundle gerbes with $mathbb{Z}_2$-actions to obtain geometric refinements of this obstruction and localisation technique. In the preliminary part we review the Freed-Moore theory of band insulators on Galilean spacetimes with emphasis on geometric constructions, and present a bottom-up approach to time-reversal symmetric topological phases.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.02991

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zbMATH Keywords

localizationtime-reversal symmetrytopological phasesKane-Mele invariantequivariant and Jandl gerbes

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Differential geometric aspects of gerbes and differential characters (53C08) Applications of global differential geometry to the sciences (53C80) Twisted (K)-theory; differential (K)-theory (19L50) Characteristic classes and numbers in differential topology (57R20) Differential geometric methods, including holonomy, Berry and Hannay phases, Aharonov-Bohm effect, etc. in quantum theory (81Q70)

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