Abstract
The conditions for both the stability and the breakdown of the topological classification of gapped ground states of noninteracting fermions, the tenfold way, in the presence of quartic fermion-fermion interactions are given for any dimension of space. This is achieved by encoding the effects of interactions on the boundary gapless modes in terms of boundary dynamical masses. Breakdown of the noninteracting topological classification occurs when the quantum nonlinear models for the boundary dynamical masses favor quantum disordered phases. For the tenfold way, we find that (i) the noninteracting topological classification is always stable, (ii) the noninteracting topological classification in even dimensions is always stable, and (iii) the noninteracting topological classification in odd dimensions is unstable and reduces to that can be identified explicitly for any dimension and any defining symmetries. We also apply our method to the three-dimensional topological crystalline insulator SnTe from the symmetry class , for which we establish the reduction of the noninteracting topological classification.
- Received 19 June 2015
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.92.125104
©2015 American Physical Society