Predicting topological materials: Symmetry-based indicator theories and beyond

Abstract

Though symmetry-based indicators formulae are powerful in diagnosing topological states with a gapped band structure at/between any high-symmetry points, it fails in diagnosing topological degeneracies when the compatibility condition is violated. In such cases, we can only obtain information of whether there is a band degeneracy at some high-symmetry points or along some high-symmetry lines by the compatibility condition. Under the framework of symmetry-based indicator theories, we proposed an algorithm to diagnose the topological band crossings in the compatibility condition-violating systems to obtain the whole topological information, by using the symmetry-based indicator formulae of their subgroups. In this paper, we reinterpret the algorithm in a simpler way with two material examples preserving different topological states in spinless systems with time-reversal symmetry, discuss the limitation of the symmetry-based indicator theories, and make further discussions on the algorithm applying in spinful systems with time-reversal symmetry 2021 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.