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2. Topologically distinct atomic insulators

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.108.L041301  

   Das, Sanjib Kumar; Manna, Sourav; Roy, Bitan (July 2023, Physical Review B)

   Topological classification of quantum solids often (if not always) groups all trivial atomic or normal insulators (NIs) into the same featureless family. As we argue here, this is not necessarily the case always. In particular, when the global phase diagram of electronic crystals harbors topological insulators with the band inversion at various time-reversal invariant momenta KTIinv in the Brillouin zone, their proximal NIs display noninverted band-gap minima at KNImin=KTIinv. In such systems, once topological superconductors nucleate from NIs, the inversion of the Bogoliubov de Gennes bands takes place at KBdGinv=KNImin, inheriting from the parent state. We showcase this (possibly general) proposal for two-dimensional time-reversal symmetry-breaking insulators. Then, distinct quantized thermal Hall conductivity and responses to dislocation lattice defects inside the paired states (tied with KBdGinv or KNImin), in turn, unambiguously identify different parent atomic NIs. 

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3. Bimorphic Floquet topological insulators

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5. Theory of oblique topological insulators

   https://doi.org/10.21468/SciPostPhys.14.2.023  

   Moy, Benjamin; Goldman, Hart; Sohal, Ramanjit; Fradkin, Eduardo (January 2023, SciPost Physics)

   A long-standing problem in the study of topological phases of matter has been to understand the types of fractional topological insulator (FTI) phases possible in 3+1 dimensions. Unlike ordinary topological insulators of free fermions, FTI phases are characterized by fractional 𝜃-angles,long-range entanglement, and fractionalization. Starting from a simple family of ℤ_N lattice gauge theories due to Cardy and Rabinovici, we develop a class of FTI phases based on the physical mechanism of oblique confinement and the modern language of generalized global symmetries. We dub these phases oblique topological insulators. Oblique TIs arise when dyons—bound states of electric charges and monopoles—condense, leading to FTI phases characterized by topological order, emergent one-forms symmetries, and gapped boundary states not realizable in 2+1-D alone.Based on the lattice gauge theory, we present continuum topological quantum field theories (TQFTs) for oblique TI phases involving fluctuating one-form and two-form gauge fields. We show explicitly that these TQFTs capture both the generalized global symmetries and topological orders seen in the lattice gauge theory. We also demonstrate that these theories exhibit a universal “generalized magneto-electric effect” in the presence of two-form background gauge fields. Moreover,we characterize the possible boundary topological orders of oblique TIs,finding a new set of boundary states not studied previously for these kinds of TQFTs. 

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