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Fractionalized topological insulators

Nature Physics volume 11, pages 385–388 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Topological insulators have emerged as a major topic of condensed matter physics research, with several novel applications proposed. Although there are now a number of established experimental examples of materials in this class, all of them can be described by theories based on electronic band structure, which implies that they do not possess electronic correlations strong enough to fundamentally change this theoretical description. Here, we review recent theoretical progress in the description of a class of strongly correlated topological insulators—fractionalized topological insulators—where band theory fails owing to the fractionalization of the electron into other degrees of freedom.

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Figure 1: Fractionalized topological insulators accessed by the U(1) slave-rotor description.
Figure 2: Fractionalized topological insulators accessed by the slave-Ising description.
Figure 3: Fractional topological insulators.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to our collaborators in this area, V. Chua, A. Karch, M. Kargarian, X-L. Qi, A. Rüegg, T. Takayanagi, C-C. J. Wang, J. Wen and S-C. Zhang. Our work was generously funded by the ARO, DARPA, DOE, NSF, the Simons Foundation, NSERC, CRC, CIFAR and start-up funds from the University of Alberta.

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Author notes

  1. Joseph Maciejko and Gregory A. Fiete: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E1, Canada

    Joseph Maciejko

  2. Theoretical Physics Institute, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E1, Canada

    Joseph Maciejko

  3. Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1Z8, Canada

    Joseph Maciejko

  4. Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA

    Gregory A. Fiete

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  1. Joseph Maciejko
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Correspondence to Joseph Maciejko.

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Maciejko, J., Fiete, G. Fractionalized topological insulators. Nature Phys 11, 385–388 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3311

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