English

Layer-number parity induced topological phase transition

Materials Science 2026-02-24 v1

Abstract

We demonstrate that stacking topologically trivial layers, under enforced symmetry restrictions, yields emergent topological phases with protected boundary states. Remarkably, the number of layers itself acts as a topological switch, enabling the system to host topological bound states in the continuum (BICs). We analytically show that the spectrum becomes gapless for an odd number of layers; combined with entanglement-spectrum calculations, this confirms that odd-layer systems indeed support topological BICs. We provide experimental confirmation of these phenomena in stacked acoustic lattices. Our findings establish a previously overlooked pathway to topology and demonstrate a readily applicable strategy for realizing exotic states in a wide range of artificial material systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.18855,
  title  = {Layer-number parity induced topological phase transition},
  author = {Kai Chen and Junyan Guan and Jiamin Guo and He Gao and Zhongming Gu and Jie Zhu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.18855},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:45:42.133Z