Topological states from topological crystals
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Updated: Dec 31, 2025

Electric-field Control of Electronic States in WS2 Nanodevices by Electrolyte Gating
Published on: April 12, 2018
Zhida Song1,2, Sheng-Jie Huang3,4, Yang Qi5,6,7
1Beijing National Research Center for Condensed Matter Physics and Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
Abstract:
We present a scheme to explicitly construct and classify general topological states jointly protected by an onsite symmetry group and a spatial symmetry group. We show that all these symmetry-protected topological states can be adiabatically deformed into a special class of states we call topological crystals. A topological crystal in, for example, three dimensions is a real-space assembly of finite-sized pieces of topological states in one and two dimensions protected by the local symmetry group alone, arranged in a configuration invariant under the spatial group and glued together such that there is no open edge or end. As a demonstration of principle, we explicitly enumerate all inequivalent topological crystals for noninteracting time-reversal symmetric electronic insulators with spin-orbit coupling and any one of the 230 space groups. This enumeration gives topological crystalline insulators a full classification.
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