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A thermodynamic quest for topological metal transition

by Linjie Ding, Yuan Zhong

Submission summary

Authors (as registered SciPost users):

L. J. Ding

Abstract

We study the topological quantum phase transition (TQPT) between a normal insulator and a topological metal state in the three-leg diamond lattices via thermodynamic means. Doing a unitary transformation, the Hilbert space of the system is divided into two independent subspaces: trivial h1 and topologically nontrivial h2 such that the TQPT is regarded as an ordinary insulator-metal transition plus a topological insulator transition. The thermal Drude weight portrays well the insulator (Dth=0) and metal (Dth>0) ground states with the low-temperature gapped and gapless low-lying excitations featured asandlinear relation, respectively. The ordinary insulator-metal transition is manifested not only by the quantum critical scaling of thermal Drude weight, but also by the critical divergence of Grüneisen ratio (GR~-T-1) with an asymmetric scaling universal curve. Differently, the topological insulator transition occurs in h2 subspace protected by a hidden inversion symmetry, which is demonstrated by the switching of winding number with band inversion as well as the finite GR nearby 1/2 with a symmetric scaling universal curve, implying the proximate self-duality of quantum critical point. Our findings provide a novel thermodynamic perspective on topological metal transition.

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