Contributor info: Dr Anouar Moustaj

Lumen Eek, Malte Röntgen, Anouar Moustaj, Cristiane Morais Smith

SciPost Phys. 18, 061 (2025) · published 20 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We demonstrate that rotation symmetry is not a necessary requirement for the existence of fractional corner charges in $C_n$-symmetric higher-order topological crystalline insulators. Instead, it is sufficient to have a latent rotation symmetry, which may be revealed upon performing an isospectral reduction on the system. We introduce the concept of a filling anomaly for latent crystalline symmetric systems, and propose modified topological invariants. The notion of higher-order topology in two dimensions protected by $C_n$ symmetry is thus generalized to a protection by latent symmetry. Our claims are corroborated by concrete examples of models that show non-trivial corner charge in the absence of $C_n$-symmetry. This work extends the classification of topological crystalline insulators to include latent symmetries.