Search

We propose a method to directly probe bulk topological quantum numbers in topological matter by measuring the momentum-space single-particle spectral function (SPSF). Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) can detect SPSF and is often used to determine the bulk band structure of quantum materials. Here, we show that while one part of the momentum-space SPSF gives band structure, it also contains the knowledge of winding and Chern numbers of various topological materials. For this, we derive SPSF in three different models of topological systems, such as the Kitaev model of topological superconductors, the long-range Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, and the Qi-Wu-Zhang model and explain how to extract the winding or Chern numbers in different topological phases from the SPSF. Such information from SPSF seems experimentally accessible due to the recent advancement of ARPES and scanning tunneling spectroscopy techniques., Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures

The geometry of quantum states could offer indispensable insights for characterizing the topological properties, phase transitions and entanglement nature of many-body systems. In this work, we reveal the quantum geometry and the associated entanglement entropy (EE) of Floquet topological states in one-dimensional periodically driven systems. The quantum metric tensors of Floquet states are found to show non-analytic signatures at topological phase transition points. Away from the transition points, the bipartite geometric EE of Floquet states exhibits an area-law scaling vs the system size, which holds for a Floquet band at any filling fractions. For a uniformly filled Floquet band, the EE further becomes purely quantum geometric. At phase transition points, the geometric EE scales logarithmically with the system size and displays cusps in the nearby parameter ranges. These discoveries are demonstrated by investigating typical Floquet models including periodically driven spin chains, Floquet topological insulators and superconductors. Our findings uncover the rich quantum geometries of Floquet states, unveiling the geometric origin of EE for gapped Floquet topological phases, and introducing information-theoretic means of depicting topological transitions in Floquet systems., Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, version accepted by PRB

Non-Hermiticity leads to distinctive topological phenomena absent in Hermitian systems. However, connection between such intrinsic non-Hermitian topology and Hermitian topology has remained largely elusive. Here, considering the bulk and boundary as an environment and system, we demonstrate that anomalous boundary states in Hermitian topological insulators exhibit non-Hermitian topology. We study the self-energy capturing the particle exchange between the bulk and boundary, and demonstrate that it detects Hermitian topology in the bulk and induces non-Hermitian topology at the boundary. As an illustrative example, we show the non-Hermitian topology and concomitant skin effect inherently embedded within chiral edge states of Chern insulators. We also find the emergence of hinge states within effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonians at surfaces of three-dimensional topological insulators. Furthermore, we comprehensively classify our correspondence across all the tenfold symmetry classes of topological insulators and superconductors. Our work uncovers a hidden connection between Hermitian and non-Hermitian topology, and provides an approach to identifying non-Hermitian topology in quantum matter., Comment: 8+10 pages, 5+1 figures

We discuss fundamental aspects of chiral anomaly-driven interactions in conformal field theory (CFT) in four spacetime dimensions. They find application in very general contexts, from early universe plasma to topological condensed matter. We outline the key shared characteristics of these interactions, specifically addressing the case of chiral anomalies, both for vector currents and gravitons. In the case of topological materials, the gravitational chiral anomaly is generated by thermal gradients via the (Tolman-Ehrenfest) Luttinger relation. In the CFT framework, a nonlocal effective action, derived through perturbation theory, indicates that the interaction is mediated by an excitation in the form of an anomaly pole, which appears in the conformal limit of the vertex. To illustrate this, we demonstrate how conformal Ward identities (CWIs) in momentum space allow us to reconstruct the entire chiral anomaly interaction in its longitudinal and transverse sectors just by inclusion of a pole in the longitudinal sector. Both sectors are coupled in amplitudes with an intermediate chiral fermion or a bilinear Chern-Simons current with intermediate photons. In the presence of fermion mass corrections, the pole transforms into a cut, but the absorption amplitude in the axial-vector channel satisfies mass-independent sum rules related to the anomaly in any chiral interaction. The detection of an axion-like/quasiparticle in these materials may rely on a combined investigation of these sum rules, along with the measurement of the angle of rotation of the plane of polarization of incident light when subjected to a chiral perturbation. This phenomenon serves as an analogue of a similar one in ordinary axion physics, in the presence of an axion-like condensate, that we rederive using axion electrodynamics., Comment: 55 pages, 5 figures

Control of topological edge modes is desirable for encoding quantum information resiliently against external noise. Their implementation on quantum hardware, however, remains a long-standing problem due to current limitations of circuit depth and noise, which grows with the number of time steps. By utilizing recently developed constant-depth quantum circuits in which the circuit depth is independent of time, we demonstrate successful long-time dynamics simulation of bulk and surface modes in topological insulators on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) processors, which exhibits robust signatures of localized topological modes. We further identify a class of one-dimensional topological Hamiltonians that can be readily simulated with NISQ hardware. Our results provide a pathway towards stable long-time implementation of topological quantum spin systems on present day quantum processors.

The past few years have witnessed a surge of interest in non-Hermitian Floquet topological matters due to their exotic properties resulting from the interplay between driving fields and non-Hermiticity. The present review sums up our studies on non-Hermitian Floquet topological matters in one and two spatial dimensions. We first give a bird's-eye view of the literature for clarifying the physical significance of non-Hermitian Floquet systems. We then introduce, in a pedagogical manner, a number of useful tools tailored for the study of non-Hermitian Floquet systems and their topological properties. With the aid of these tools, we present typical examples of non-Hermitian Floquet topological insulators, superconductors, and quasicrystals, with a focus on their topological invariants, bulk-edge correspondences, non-Hermitian skin effects, dynamical properties, and localization transitions. We conclude this review by summarizing our main findings and presenting our vision of future directions., Comment: 86 pages, 10 figures, submitted

Topological supermatter is given by ordinary topological matter constrained by supersymmetry or graded supergroups such as OSP(2N|2N). Using results on super oscillators and lattice QFT$_{d}$, we construct a super tight binding model on hypercubic super lattice with supercharge $ \boldsymbol{Q}=\sum_{\mathbf{k}}\hat{F}_{\mathbf{k}}.\boldsymbol{q}_{\mathbf{k}}.\hat{B}_{\mathbf{k}}$. We first show that the algebraic triplet $(\Omega ,G,J)$ of super oscillators can be derived from the $OSp(2N|2N)$ supergroup containing the symplectic $Sp(2N)$ and the orthogonal $SO(2N)$ as even subgroups. Then, we apply the obtained result on super oscillating matter to super bands and investigate its topological obstructions protected by TPC symmetries. We also give a classification of the Bose/Fermi coupling matrix $\boldsymbol{q}_{\mathbf{k}}$ in terms of subgroups of $OSp(2N|2N)$\ and show that there are $2P_{N}$ (partition of $N$) classes $\boldsymbol{q}_{\mathbf{k}}$ given by unitary subgroups of $U\left( 2\right) \times U\left( N\right) $. Other features are also given., Comment: LaTeX, 74 pages, 7 figures

Topological phases of matter are ubiquitous in crystals, but less is known about their existence in amorphous systems, that lack long-range order. In this perspective, we review the recent progress made on theoretically defining amorphous topological phases and the new phenomenology that they can open. We revisit key experiments suggesting that amorphous topological phases exist in both solid-state and synthetic amorphous systems. We finish by discussing the open questions in the field, that promises to significantly enlarge the set of materials and synthetic systems benefiting from the robustness of topological matter., Comment: This is an extended version of the article accepted in EPL

In two dimensions, magnetic higher-order topological insulators (HOTIs) are characterized by excess boundary charge and a compensating bulk ``filling anomaly.'' At the same time, without additional noncrystalline symmetries, the boundaries of two-dimensional HOTIs are gapped and featureless at low energies, while the bulk of the system is predicted to have a topological response to the insertion of lattice (particularly disclination) defects. Until recently, a precise connection between these effects has remained elusive. In this work, we point the direction towards a unifying field-theoretic description for the bulk and boundary response of magnetic HOTIs. By focusing on the low-energy description of the gapped boundary of a two-dimensional magnetic HOTI with no time-reversing symmetries, we show that the boundary charge and filling anomaly arise from the gravitational ``Gromov-Jensen-Abanov'' (GJA) response action first introduced in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 126802 (2016)] in the context of the quantum Hall effect. As in quantum Hall systems the GJA action cancels apparent anomalies associated with bulk response to disclinations, allowing us to derive a concrete connection between the bulk and boundary theories of HOTIs. We show how our results elucidate the connection between higher order topology and geometric response both in band insulators, and point towards a new route to understanding interacting higher order topological phases beyond the simple cases considered here., Comment: v2: accepted version v1: 14+epsilon pages

We develop a chiral anomalous fermion hamiltonian proposal to study the higher order topological (HOT) phase with chiral symmetry $\mathcal{C}$ fractionalized like $\mathcal{C}_{x}\mathcal{C}_{y}\mathcal{C}_{z}$. First, we solve the $\mathcal{C}$-chiral symmetry constraint for eight band models and describe those induced by the partial $\mathcal{C}_{i}$'s. Then, we determine the explicit expression of fractional states characterising HOT matter and comment on the relationships amongst them and with the standard Altland-Zirnbauer gapless modes. We also give characteristic properties of the gapless fractional states and compute their contribution to the topological index of the chiral model. The findings of this work are shown to be crucial for investigating and handling high order topological phase., Comment: 18 PAGES, 3 Figures

Here, we reveal our recent progress on a geometrical approach of quantum physics and topological crystals linking with Dirac magnetic monopoles and gauge fields through classical electrodynamics. The Bloch sphere of a quantum spin-1/2 particle acquires an integer topological charge in the presence of a radial magnetic field. We show that global topological properties are encoded from the poles of the surface allowing a correspondence between smooth fields, metric and quantum distance with the square of the topological number. The information is transported from each pole to the equatorial plane on a thin Dirac string. We develop the theory, "quantum topometry" in space and time, and present applications on transport from a Newtonian approach, on a quantized photo-electric effect from circular dichroism of light towards topological band structures of crystals. Edge modes related to topological lattice models are resolved analytically when deforming the sphere or ellipse onto a cylinder. Topological properties of the quantum Hall effect, quantum anomalous Hall effect and quantum spin Hall effect on the honeycomb lattice can be measured locally in the Brillouin zone from light-matter coupling. The formalism allows us to include interaction effects from the momentum space. Interactions may also result in fractional entangled geometry within the curved space. We develop a relation between entangled wavefunction in quantum mechanics, coherent superposition of geometries, a way to one-half topological numbers and Majorana fermions. We show realizations in topological matter. We present a link between axion electrodynamics, topological insulators on a surface of a cube and the two-spheres' model via merons., Comment: 108 Pages, Review Submitted to Physics Reports Elsevier September 2023. Thanks for the comments

Entanglement is one of the most fundamental features of quantum systems. In this work, we obtain the entanglement spectrum and entropy of Floquet noninteracting fermionic lattice models and build their connections with Floquet topological phases. Topological winding and Chern numbers are introduced to characterize the entanglement spectrum and eigenmodes. Correspondences between the spectrum and topology of entanglement Hamiltonians under periodic boundary conditions and topological edge states under open boundary conditions are further established. The theory is applied to Floquet topological insulators in different symmetry classes and spatial dimensions. Our work thus provides a useful framework for the study of rich entanglement patterns in Floquet topological matter., Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures

Topology enters in quantum field theory (qft) in multiple forms: one of the most important, in non-abelian gauge theories, being in the identification of the $\theta$ vacuum in QCD. A very relevant aspect of this connection is through the phenomenon of chiral and conformal qft anomalies. It has been realized that a class of materials, comprising topological insulators and Weyl semimetals, also exhibit the phenomenon of anomalies, which are responsible for several exotic phenomena, such as the presence of edge currents, resilient under perturbations and scattering by impurities. Another example comes from the response functions of these materials under thermal and mechanical stresses, that may be performed using correlation functions of stress energy tensors in General Relativity. In this case the conformal anomaly plays an important role. We briefly illustrate some salient features of this correspondence, and the effective action describing the long-range interactions that may account for such topological effects., Comment: 6 pages, contributed to QCD at work Lecce, 27-30 June 2020

Local topological markers, topological invariants evaluated by local expectation values, are valuable for characterizing topological phases in materials lacking translation invariance. The Chern marker -- the Chern number expressed in terms of the Fourier transformed Chern character -- is an easily applicable local marker in even dimensions, but there are no analogous expressions for odd dimensions. We provide general analytic expressions for local markers for free-fermion topological states in odd dimensions protected by local symmetries: a Chiral marker, a local $\mathbb Z$ marker which in case of translation invariance is equivalent to the chiral winding number, and a Chern-Simons marker, a local $\mathbb Z_2$ marker characterizing all nonchiral phases in odd dimensions. We achieve this by introducing a one-parameter family $P_{\vartheta}$ of single-particle density matrices interpolating between a trivial state and the state of interest. By interpreting the parameter $\vartheta$ as an additional dimension, we calculate the Chern marker for the family $P_{\vartheta}$. We demonstrate the practical use of these markers by characterizing the topological phases of two amorphous Hamiltonians in three dimensions: a topological superconductor ($\mathbb Z$ classification) and a topological insulator ($\mathbb Z_2$ classification)., Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures; V2: Added supplemental material

In this paper, we study five-dimensional Dirac fermions of which extra-dimension is compactified on quantum graphs. We find that there is a non-trivial correspondence between matrices specifying boundary conditions at the vertex of the quantum graphs and zero-dimensional Hamiltonians in gapped free-fermion systems. Based on the correspondence, we provide a complete topological classification of the boundary conditions in terms of non-interacting fermionic topological phases. The ten symmetry classes of topological phases are fully identified in the language of five-dimensional Dirac fermions, and topological numbers of the boundary conditions are given. In analogy with the bulk-boundary correspondence in non-interacting fermionic topological phases, the boundary condition topological numbers predict four-dimensional massless fermions localized at the vertex of the quantum graphs and thus govern the low energy physics in four dimensions., Comment: 40 pages, 8 figures, 5 tables

Since the breakthrough of twistronics a plethora of topological phenomena in two dimensions has appeared, specially relating topology and electronic correlations. These systems can be typically analyzed in terms of lattice models of increasing complexity using Green's function techniques. In this work we introduce a general method to obtain the boundary Green's function of such models taking advantage of the numerical Faddeev-LeVerrier algorithm to circumvent some analytical constraints of previous works. As an illustration we apply our formalism to analyze the edge features of Chern insulators, topological superconductors as the Kitaev square lattice and the Checkerboard lattice in the flat band topological regime. The efficiency of the method is demonstrated by comparison to standard recursive Green's function calculations., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures

The abundance of semiconductors in our smartphones, computers, fiber optic junctions, cars, light sources, photovoltaic and thermoelectric cells results from the possibilities of controlling their properties through doping, lighting, and applying various fields. This paper, a part of the volume celebrating 100 years of the Polish Physical Society, presents a biased selection of worthwhile results obtained by researchers at the Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences relevant, as seen today, to topological matter and spintronics. Comprehensive studies, combining materials development, experimental investigations, and theoretical description of narrow-gap and dilute-magnetic semiconductors have been especially significant in this context. This survey also emphasizes, in an autobiographical tone, a half of a century of the author's intellectual emotions accompanying the rise of ideas and quantitative theories, allowing identifying the physics behind ongoing and future observations., Comment: version 3 is updated by recent results

We give an overview of the work done during the past ten years on the Casimir interaction in electronic topological materials, our focus being solids which possess surface or bulk electronic band structures with nontrivial topologies, which can be evinced through optical properties that are characterizable in terms of nonzero topological invariants. The examples we review are three-dimensional magnetic topological insulators, two-dimensional Chern insulators, graphene monolayers exhibiting the relativistic quantum Hall effect, and time reversal symmetry-broken Weyl semimetals, which are fascinating systems in the context of Casimir physics, firstly for the reason that they possess electromagnetic properties characterizable by axial vectors (because of time reversal symmetry breaking), and depending on the mutual orientation of a pair of such axial vectors, two systems can experience a repulsive Casimir-Lifshitz force even though they may be dielectrically identical. Secondly, the repulsion thus generated is potentially robust against weak disorder, as such repulsion is associated with a Hall conductivity which is topologically protected in the zero-frequency limit. Finally, the far-field low-temperature behavior of the Casimir force of such systems can provide signatures of topological quantization., Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures, and 2 tables

We explore the interplay between topologies in the momentum and real spaces to formulate a thermodynamic description of nonequilibrium injection of topological charges under external bias. We show that the edge modes engendered by the momentum-space topology can play a functional role of connecting the external reservoirs to the bulk transport of topological charges in the real space. We illustrate our general results with two examples: the spin-torque injection of skyrmions in an electrically-biased integer quantum Hall system, and the vortex injection in a topological $p\,+\,i\,p$ superconductor coupled to heat reservoirs. Based on the universal fractional entropy of the Majorana zero modes bound to the vortices, their controllable injection proposed in this work could provide a route for creating and manipulating Majorana fermions.

The infamous sign problem leads to an exponential complexity in Monte Carlo simulations of generic many-body quantum systems. Nevertheless, many phases of matter are known to admit a sign-problem-free representative, allowing efficient simulations on classical computers. Motivated by long standing open problems in many-body physics, as well as fundamental questions in quantum complexity, the possibility of intrinsic sign problems, where a phase of matter admits no sign-problem-free representative, was recently raised but remains largely unexplored. Here, we establish the existence of an intrinsic sign problem in a broad class of gapped, chiral, topological phases of matter. Within this class, we exclude the possibility of stoquastic Hamiltonians for bosons (or 'qudits'), and of sign-problem-free determinantal Monte Carlo algorithms for fermions. The intrinsically sign-problematic class of phases we identify is defined in terms of topological invariants with clear observable signatures: the chiral central charge, and the topological spins of anyons. We obtain analogous results for phases that are spontaneously chiral, and present evidence for an extension of our results that applies to both chiral and non-chiral topological matter., Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, 1 table (+ appendix: 8 pages, 2 figures). v2: updated Table I, additional minor changes

Simulating the topological phases of matter in synthetic quantum simulators is a topic of considerable interest. Given the universality of digital quantum simulators, the prospect of digitally simulating exotic topological phases is greatly enhanced. However, it is still an open question how to realize digital quantum simulation of topological phases of matter. Here, using common single- and two-qubit elementary quantum gates, we propose and demonstrate an approach to design topologically protected quantum circuits on the current generation of noisy quantum processors where spin-orbital coupling and related topological matter can be digitally simulated. In particular, a low-depth topological quantum circuit is performed on both IBM and Rigetti quantum processors. In the experiments, we not only observe but also distinguish the 0 and $\pi$ energy topological edge states by measuring qubit excitation distribution at the output of the circuits., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, Accepted by PRL

We establish the theory of critical transport in amorphous Chern insulators and show that it lies beyond the current paradigm of topological criticality epitomized by the quantum Hall transitions. We consider models of Chern insulators on percolation-type random lattices where the average density determines the statistical properties of geometry. While these systems display a two-parameter scaling behaviour near the critical density, the critical exponents and the critical conductance distributions are strikingly nonuniversal. Our analysis indicates that the amorphous topological criticality results from an interpolation of a geometric-type transition at low density and an Anderson localization-type transition at high density. Our work demonstrates how the recently discovered amorphous topological systems display unique phenomena distinct from their conventionally-studied counterparts., Comment: 5+7 pages. 3+4 figures

With its boundary tracing out a link or knot in 3D, the Seifert surface is a 2D surface of core importance to topological classification. We propose the first-ever experimentally realistic setup where Seifert surfaces emerge as the boundary states of 4D topological matter. Unlike ordinary real space knots that exist in polymers, biomolecules and everyday life, our knots and their Seifert surfaces exist as momentum space nodal structures, where topological linkages have profound effects on optical and transport phenomena. Realized with 4D circuit lattices, our nodal Seifert systems are freed from symmetry constraints and readily tunable due to the dimension and distance agnostic nature of circuit connections. Importantly, their Seifert surfaces manifest as very pronounced impedance peaks in their 3D-imaging via impedance measurements, and are directly related to knot invariants like the Alexander polynomial and knot Signature. This work thus unleashes the great potential of Seifert surfaces as sophisticated yet accessible mathematical tools in the study of exotic band structures., Comment: 19 pages, 14 figures

Topological matter has become one of the most important subjects in contemporary condensed matter physics. Here, I would like to provide a pedagogical review explaining some of the main ideas, which were pivotal in establishing topological matter as such an important subject. Specifically, I explain how the integer quantum Hall state played the role as a prototype for topological insulator, eventually leading to the concept of topological matter in general. The topological nature of the integer quantum Hall state is best represented by the Thouless-Kohmoto-Nightingale-den Nijs, or so-called TKNN formula, which connects between the Berry phase and the Hall conductivity. The topological non-triviality of topological insulator stems from the existence of a Dirac monopole in an appropriate, but often hidden Hamiltonian parameter space. Interestingly, having the identical Dirac monopole structure, the Hamiltonian describing the Rabi oscillation bears the essence of topological insulator. The concept of topological matter has expanded to include topological semimetals such as Weyl and Dirac semimetals. A final frontier in the research of topological matter is the interaction-induced topological phases of matter, namely, the fractional Chern and topological insulators. The existence of the fractional Chern and topological insulators has been proposed theoretically by drawing an analogy from the fractional quantum Hall states. The gist of this proposal is explained along with some of its issues. I conclude this review by discussing some of the future directions in the research of topological matter., Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures

We investigate the properties of an impurity particle interacting with a Fermi gas in a Chern-insulating state. The interaction leads to the formation of an exotic polaron, which consists of a coherent superposition of the topologically-trivial impurity and the surrounding topological cloud. We characterize this intriguing topologically-composite object by calculating its transverse (Hall) conductivity, using diagrammatic as well as variational methods. The "polaronic Hall conductivity" is shown to be non-zero whenever the surrounding cloud is prepared in a non-trivial Chern insulating state, which we attribute to the transverse drag exerted by the dressing cloud on the impurity. In this way, the polaron partially inherits the topological properties of the Chern insulator through genuine interaction effects. This is also analysed at the microscopic level of wave functions, by identifying a "composite Berry curvature" for the polaron, which closely mimics the Berry curvature of the Chern insulator's band structure. Finally, we discuss how this interplay between topology and many-body correlations can be studied in cold-atom experiments, using available technologies., Comment: 6 +4 pages, 4+4 figures

The topology of two-dimensional materials traditionally manifests itself through the quantization of the Hall conductance, which is revealed in transport measurements. Recently, it was predicted that topology can also give rise to a quantized spectroscopic response upon subjecting a Chern insulator to a circular drive: Comparing the frequency-integrated depletion rates associated with drives of opposite orientations leads to a quantized response dictated by the topological Chern number of the populated Bloch band. Here we experimentally demonstrate this intriguing topological effect for the first time, using ultracold fermionic atoms in topological Floquet bands. In addition, our depletion-rate measurements also provide a first experimental estimation of the Wannier-spread functional, a fundamental geometric property of Bloch bands. Our results establish topological spectroscopic responses as a versatile probe, which could be applied to access the geometry and topology of many-body quantum systems, such as fractional Chern insulators.

We present a complete quantization of Lorentzian D=1+2 gravity with cosmological constant, coupled to a set of topological matter fields. The approach of Loop Quantum Gravity is used thanks to a partial gauge fixing leaving a residual gauge invariance under a compact semi-simple gauge group, namely Spin(4) = SU(2) x SU(2). A pair of quantum observables is constructed, which are non-trivial despite of being null at the classical level., Comment: 18 pages, Latex. Two references added

We describe an efficient numerical approach to calculate the longitudinal and transverse Kubo conductivities of large systems using Bastin's formulation. We expand the Green's functions in terms of Chebyshev polynomials and compute the conductivity tensor for any temperature and chemical potential in a single step. To illustrate the power and generality of the approach, we calculate the conductivity tensor for the quantum Hall effect in disordered graphene and analyze the effect of the disorder in a Chern insulator in Haldane's model on a honeycomb lattice., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures and a supplementary material (3 pages)

We introduce a universally applicable method, based on the bond-algebraic theory of dualities, to search for generalized order parameters in disparate systems including non-Landau systems with topological order. A key notion that we advance is that of {\em holographic symmetry}. It reflects situations wherein global symmetries become, under a duality mapping, symmetries that act solely on the system's boundary. Holographic symmetries are naturally related to edge modes and localization. The utility of our approach is illustrated by systematically deriving generalized order parameters for pure and matter-coupled Abelian gauge theories, and for some models of topological matter., Comment: v2, 10 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review B Rapid Communications

Topological matter is characterized by the presence of a topological BF term in its long-distance effective action. Topological defects due to the compactness of the U(1) gauge fields induce quantum phase transitions between topological insulators, topological superconductors and topological confinement. In conventional superconductivity, due to spontaneous symmetry breaking, the photon acquires a mass due to the Anderson-Higgs mechanism. In this paper we derive the corresponding effective actions for the electromagnetic field in topological superconductors and topological confinement phases. In topological superconductors magnetic flux is confined and the photon acquires a topological mass through the BF mechanism: no symmetry breaking is involved, the ground state has topological order and the transition is induced by quantum fluctuations. In topological confinement, instead, electric charge is linearly confined and the photon becomes a massive antisymmetric tensor via the St\"uckelberg mechanism. Oblique confinement phases arise when the string condensate carries both magnetic and electric flux (dyonic strings). Such phases are characterized by a vortex quantum Hall effect potentially relevant for the dissipationless transport of information stored on vortices., Comment: 5 pages, no figures

Physics of graphene and physics of superfluid phases of 3He have many common features. Both systems are topological materials where quasiparticles behave as relativistic massless (Weyl, Majorana or Dirac) fermions. We formulate the points where these features are overlapping. This will allow us to use graphene for study the properties of superfluid 3He, to use superfluid 3He for study the properties of graphene, and to use the combination to study the physics of topological quantum vacuum. We suggest also some particular experiments with superfluid 3He using graphene as an atomically thin membrane impenetrable for He atoms but allowing for spin, momentum and energy transfer., Comment: 12 pages, no figures, JOLT style, prepared for Proceedings of Microkelvin Workshop 2013, modified after referee reports

We consider the dimensional crossover in the topological matter, which involves the transformation of different types of topologically protected zeroes in the fermionic spectrum. In the considered case, the multiple Dirac (Fermi) point in quasi 2-dimensional system evolves into the flat band on the surface of the 3-dimensional system when the number of atomic layers increases. This is accompanied by formation of the spiral nodal lines in the bulk. We also discuss the topological quantum phase transition at which the surface flat band shrinks and changes its chirality, while the nodal spiral changes its helicity., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures