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Layer construction of topological crystalline insulator LaSbTe

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Abstract

Topological crystalline insulator (TCI) is one of the symmetry-protected topological states. Any TCI can be deformed into a simple product state of several decoupled two-dimensional (2D) topologically nontrivial layers in its lattice respecting its crystalline symmetries called the layer construction (LC) limit. In this work, based on first-principles calculations we have revealed that both tetragonal LaSbTe (t-LaSbTe) and orthorhombic LaSbTe (o-LaSbTe) can be interpreted as stacking of 2D topological insulators in each lattice space. The structural phase transition from t-LaSbTe to o-LaSbTe due to soft phonon modes demonstrates how the real space change can lead to the modification of topological states. Their symmetry-based indicators and topological invariants have been analyzed based on LC. We propose that LaSbTe is an ideal example demonstrating the LC paradigm, which bridges the crystal structures in real space to the band topology in momentum space.

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Author notes

  1. Those authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    YuTing Qian, ZhiYun Tan, Tan Zhang, JiaCheng Gao, ZhiJun Wang, Zhong Fang, Chen Fang & HongMing Weng

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    YuTing Qian, Tan Zhang, JiaCheng Gao, ZhiJun Wang, Zhong Fang, Chen Fang & HongMing Weng

  3. School of Physics and Electronic Science, Zunyi Normal University, Zunyi, 563006, China

    ZhiYun Tan

  4. Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Dongguan, 523808, China

    Chen Fang & HongMing Weng

  5. CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Chen Fang & HongMing Weng

Authors
  1. YuTing Qian
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  2. ZhiYun Tan
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  3. Tan Zhang
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  5. ZhiJun Wang
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  6. Zhong Fang
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  7. Chen Fang
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  8. HongMing Weng
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Chen Fang or HongMing Weng.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11504117, 11674369, 11925408, 11921004, and 11974395). ZhiYun Tan acknowledges the support from the Foundation of Guizhou Science and Technology Department (Grant No. QKH-LHZ[2017]7091). ZhiJun Wang acknowledges the support from the National Thousand-Young-Talents Program, the CAS Pioneer Hundred Talents Program, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. HongMing Weng acknowledges the support from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant Nos. 2016YFA0300600, 2016YFA0302400, and 2018YFA0305700), and the K. C. Wong Education Foundation (Grant No. GJTD-2018-01). We acknowledge helpful discussions with Yi Jiang and ZhiDa Song.

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Qian, Y., Tan, Z., Zhang, T. et al. Layer construction of topological crystalline insulator LaSbTe. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 63, 107011 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-019-1515-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-019-1515-4

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