Higher-Order Topological States with Cleavage-Dependent Dirac Mass
Abstract
Topological quantum chemistry based on local charge profiles lacks predictive power for the crystalline cleavage of higher-order topological insulators (HOTIs). By cleaving an obstructed atomic insulator, we discover a topological phase characterized by e/2-fractional charges localized at precisely half of the corners, while the remaining empty corners host complementary vacancies of interstice charge. These zero-energy charge vacancies and topological corners form a spatially balanced geometry, separately localized at four corners. Crucially, we demonstrate that the emergence of corner zero modes dictates that specific dangling bonds acting as the mass of a Dirac fermion-must explicitly expose in, and subtly slope toward, the corner regions. This strict directionality is verified by the anisotropic evolution of the mass term within a (2+1) dimensional parameter space. Moreover, we find that the topological corners acquire lower entanglement entropy compared to the bulk, a behavior opposite to that of the real-space energy distribution which forms an energy-entropy compensation, essentially derived from the topological charge compensation. Our work paves the way for the local chemical environment at topological boundaries, and demonstrates the higher order quantum transport counterparts for high energy Dirac physics.
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BibTeX
@misc{chen2026higherorder,
title = {{Higher-Order Topological States with Cleavage-Dependent Dirac Mass}},
author = {Hongyu Chen and Min Long and Chuang Chen and Zi Yang Meng},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.10520},
eprint = {2608.10520},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.10520},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Higher-Order Topological States with Cleavage-Dependent Dirac Mass
AU - Hongyu Chen
AU - Min Long
AU - Chuang Chen
AU - Zi Yang Meng
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.10520
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.10520
AB - Topological quantum chemistry based on local charge profiles lacks predictive power for the crystalline cleavage of higher-order topological insulators (HOTIs). By cleaving an obstructed atomic insulator, we discover a topological phase characterized by e/2-fractional charges localized at precisely half of the corners, while the remaining empty corners host complementary vacancies of interstice charge. These zero-energy charge vacancies and topological corners form a spatially balanced geometry, separately localized at four corners. Crucially, we demonstrate that the emergence of corner zero modes dictates that specific dangling bonds acting as the mass of a Dirac fermion-must explicitly expose in, and subtly slope toward, the corner regions. This strict directionality is verified by the anisotropic evolution of the mass term within a (2+1) dimensional parameter space. Moreover, we find that the topological corners acquire lower entanglement entropy compared to the bulk, a behavior opposite to that of the real-space energy distribution which forms an energy-entropy compensation, essentially derived from the topological charge compensation. Our work paves the way for the local chemical environment at topological boundaries, and demonstrates the higher order quantum transport counterparts for high energy Dirac physics.
ER -