Long-range Coulomb Interaction effects on Topological Phase Transitions between Semi-metals and Insulators
Abstract
Topological states may be protected by a lattice symmetry in a class of topological semi-metals. In three spatial dimensions, the Berry flux around gapless excitations in momentum space defines a chirality concretely, so a protecting symmetry may be referred to as a chiral symmetry. Prime examples include Dirac semi-metal (DSM) in a distorted spinel, BiZnSiO, protected by a mirror symmetry and DSM in NaBi, protected by a rotational symmetry. In these states, topology and a chiral symmetry are intrinsically tied. In this work, we investigate characteristics interplay between a chiral symmetry order parameter and instantaneous long-range Coulomb interaction with the standard renormalization group method. We show that a topological transition associated with a chiral symmetry is stable under the presence of the Coulomb interaction and the electron velocity always becomes faster than one of a chiral symmetry order parameter. Thus, the transition {\it must not} be relativistic, which implies a supersymmetry is intrinsically forbidden by the long-range Coulomb interaction. {Asymptotically exact} universal ratios of physical quantities such as energy gap ratio are obtained, and connections with experiments and recent theoretical proposals are also discussed.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1802.05727,
title = {Long-range Coulomb Interaction effects on Topological Phase Transitions between Semi-metals and Insulators},
author = {SangEun Han and Eun-Gook Moon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.05727},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
Published at PRB Rapid Communication (Phys. Rev. B 97, 241101(R) (2018)), Main text: 6 pages, 1 table, 2 figures, Supplementary Meterial: 9 pages, 3 figures