English

Density-driven higher-order topological phase transitions in amorphous solids

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2022-10-04 v2

Abstract

Amorphous topological states, which are independent of the specific spatial distribution of microscopic constructions, have gained much attention. Recently, higher-order topological insulators, which are a new class of topological phases of matter, have been proposed in amorphous systems. Here, we propose a density-driven higher-order topological phase transition in a two-dimensional amorphous system. We demonstrate that the amorphous system hosts a topological trivial phase at low density. With an increase in the density of lattice sites, the topological trivial phase converts to a higher-order topological phase characterized by a quantized quadrupole moment and the existence of topological corner states. Furthermore, we confirm that the density-driven higher-order topological phase transition is size dependent. In addition, our results should be general and equally applicable to three-dimensional amorphous systems. Our findings may greatly enrich the study of higher-order topological states in amorphous systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2207.12971,
  title  = {Density-driven higher-order topological phase transitions in amorphous solids},
  author = {Tan Peng and Chun-Bo Hua and Rui Chen and Zheng-Rong Liu and Hai-Ming Huang and Bin Zhou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.12971},
  year   = {2022}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-25T01:14:40.551Z