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Higher-order topology protected by latent crystalline symmetries

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

Submission summary

Authors (as registered SciPost users):

Anouar Moustaj

Abstract

We demonstrate that rotation symmetry is not a necessary requirement for the existence of fractional corner charges in Cn-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 Cn 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 Cn-symmetry. This work extends the classification of topological crystalline insulators to include latent symmetries.

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