Topological Phases and Symmetry: Latest Advances and Prospects

A special issue of Symmetry (ISSN 2073-8994). This special issue belongs to the section "Physics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2023) | Viewed by 4109

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Physics and Astronomy, Sun Yat-Sen University (Zhuhai Campus), Zhuhai 519082, China
Interests: quantum gases; quantum optics; topological physics
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Guest Editor
Institute of Mathematics and Physics, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, Changsha 410004, China
Interests: Bose-Einstein condensates; cold atoms; quantum dynamics; optical lattices; quantum optics
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Guest Editor
School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Interests: cavity optomechanics; few-photon nonlinear optics; quantum manipulations
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Since topology was first introduced to explain the quantum Hall effect, topological phases have brought new insights to quantum physics and demonstrated potential applications in quantum devices and quantum computing. After the proposal of the anomalous quantum Hall effect induced by time-reversal symmetry breaking, people realized that topological phases and symmetry are intimately related. Indeed, most topological states of matter can be classified via spatial and/or non-spatial symmetries, which provides guidance for topological materials such as topological insulators. Recently, topological insulators have been generalized to higher-order topological insulators in which n-order boundary states of a d-dimensional lattice are localized at (d–n)-dimensions. However, a complete classification of higher-order topological phases via symmetry is challenging and still lacking. Another trend is extending topological phases from the field of condensed matter to ultracold atoms and to photonics. Going beyond simulating topological states of condensed matter, these new platforms with different ingredients and interactions provide new opportunities for topological phases and symmetry, such as non-Hermiticity, nonlinearity, strong interaction, and nonparaxiality of light. This Special Issue collects papers that feature the latest advances and prospects of topological phases and symmetry with a particular interest in both theories and experiments of higher-order, non-Hermitian, nonlinear, and interacting topological states.

Dr. Yongguan Ke
Prof. Dr. Honghua Zhong
Prof. Dr. Xin-You Lv
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • higher-order topological insulators
  • topological photonics
  • topological states of ultracold atoms
  • topological cavity/waveguide QED
  • non-hermitian effects
  • nonlinear and strong interaction
  • symmetry classification

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 2128 KiB  
Article
Pairing Superfluid–Insulator Transition Induced by Atom–Molecule Conversion in Bosonic Mixtures in Optical Lattice
by Haiming Deng, Zhi Tan, Chao Kong, Fuqiu Ye and Honghua Zhong
Symmetry 2023, 15(9), 1715; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym15091715 - 7 Sep 2023
Viewed by 1170
Abstract
Motivated by the recent experiment on bosonic mixtures of atoms and molecules, we investigate pairing superfluid–insulator (SI) transition for bosonic mixtures of atoms and molecules in a one-dimensional optical lattice, which is described by an extended Bose–Hubbard model with atom–molecule conservation (AMC). It [...] Read more.
Motivated by the recent experiment on bosonic mixtures of atoms and molecules, we investigate pairing superfluid–insulator (SI) transition for bosonic mixtures of atoms and molecules in a one-dimensional optical lattice, which is described by an extended Bose–Hubbard model with atom–molecule conservation (AMC). It is found that AMC can induce an extra pair–superfluid phase though the system does not demonstrate pair-hopping. In particular, the system may undergo several pairing SI or insulator–superfluid transitions as the detuning from the Feshbach resonance is varied from negative to positive, and the larger positive detuning can bifurcate the pair–superfluid phases into mixed superfluid phases consisting of single-atomic and pair-atomic superfluid. The calculation of the second-order Rényi entropy reveals that the discontinuity in its first-order derivative corresponds to the phase boundary of the pairing SI transition. This means that the residual entanglement in our mean-field treatment can be used to efficiently capture the signature of the pairing SI transition induced by AMC. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Topological Phases and Symmetry: Latest Advances and Prospects)
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25 pages, 11076 KiB  
Article
Generating Many Majorana Corner Modes and Multiple Phase Transitions in Floquet Second-Order Topological Superconductors
by Longwen Zhou
Symmetry 2022, 14(12), 2546; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym14122546 - 2 Dec 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2156
Abstract
A d-dimensional, nth-order topological insulator or superconductor has localized eigenmodes at its (dn)-dimensional boundaries (nd). In this work, we apply periodic driving fields to two-dimensional superconductors, and obtain a wide variety of [...] Read more.
A d-dimensional, nth-order topological insulator or superconductor has localized eigenmodes at its (dn)-dimensional boundaries (nd). In this work, we apply periodic driving fields to two-dimensional superconductors, and obtain a wide variety of Floquet second-order topological superconducting (SOTSC) phases with many Majorana corner modes at both zero and π quasienergies. Two distinct Floquet SOTSC phases are found to be separated by three possible kinds of transformations, i.e., a topological phase transition due to the closing/reopening of a bulk spectral gap, a topological phase transition due to the closing/reopening of an edge spectral gap, or an entirely different phase in which the bulk spectrum is gapless. Thanks to the strong interplay between driving and intrinsic energy scales of the system, all the found phases and transitions are highly controllable via tuning a single hopping parameter of the system. Our discovery not only enriches the possible forms of Floquet SOTSC phases, but also offers an efficient scheme to generate many coexisting Majorana zero and π corner modes, which may find applications in Floquet quantum computation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Topological Phases and Symmetry: Latest Advances and Prospects)
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