Crystallographic interacting topological phases and equivariant cohomology: to assume or not to assume

Abstract

Abstract For symmorphic crystalline interacting gapped systems we derive a classification under adiabatic evolution. This classification is complete for non-degenerate ground states. For the degenerate case we discuss some invariants given by equivariant characteristic classes. We do not assume an emergent relativistic field theory nor that phases form a topological spectrum. We also do not restrict to systems with short-range entanglement, stability against stacking with trivial systems nor assume the existence of quasi-particles as is done in SPT and SET classifications respectively. Using a slightly generalized Bloch decomposition and Grassmanians made out of ground state spaces, we show that the P-equivariant cohomology of a d-dimensional torus gives rise to different interacting phases, where P denotes the point group of the crystalline structure. We compare our results to bosonic symmorphic crystallographic SPT phases and to non-interacting fermionic crystallographic phases in class A. Finally we discuss the relation of our assumptions to those made for crystallographic SPT and SET phases.

Keywords

• Discrete Symmetries
• Topological States of Matter
• Topological Field Theories