https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2012-30123-2
Regular Article
Symmetry-protected quantum phase transition in topological insulators
1 Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, P.R. China
2 Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, P.R. China
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e-mail: liulf@mail.bnu.edu.cn
Received: 10 February 2012
Received in final form: 18 April 2012
Published online: 6 August 2012
In this paper, based on the lattice model of a topological insulator, we study the quantum phase transitions of topological insulators with different symmetry by calculating their phase diagrams and topological invariants. In particular, we investigate the symmetry-protected nature of the topological quantum phase transitions: topological quantum phase transitions can not be classified by symmetries. However, the symmetry of the system plays an important role: different topological quantum phase transitions are protected by different (global) symmetries and then described by different topological invariants.
Key words: Mesoscopic and Nanoscale Systems
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag, 2012
