2019/10/31 by Jiabin Yu, Chao-Xing Liu · 31 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #2D Materials and Applications #Chemical and Physical Properties of Materials #Invariant (physics) #Jump #Phase transition #Piezoelectricity #Quantum #Quantum phase transition #Quantum phases #Symmetry (geometry) #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Topology (electrical circuits) #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-020-16058-2
published in Nature Communications 11(1), 2290 (Nature Portfolio) · Close to the published version
openalex created_date 2019/10/25 · openalex publication_date 2020/05/08 · arxiv created 2020/05/09 · arxiv updated 2020/05/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract Finding new physical responses that signal topological quantum phase transitions is of both theoretical and experimental importance. Here, we demonstrate that the piezoelectric response can change discontinuously across a topological quantum phase transition in two-dimensional time-reversal invariant systems with spin-orbit coupling, thus serving as a direct probe of the transition. We study all gap closing cases for all 7 plane groups that allow non-vanishing piezoelectricity, and find that any gap closing with 1 fine-tuning parameter between two gapped states changes either the Z 2 invariant or the locally stable valley Chern number. The jump of the piezoelectric response is found to exist for all these transitions, and we propose the HgTe/CdTe quantum well and BaMnSb 2 as two potential experimental platforms. Our work provides a general theoretical framework to classify topological quantum phase transitions, and reveals their ubiquitous relation to the piezoelectric response.