Hourglass fermion surface states in stacked topological insulators with nonsymmorphic symmetry

Abstract

Recently a nonsymmorphic topological insulator was predicted, where the characteristic feature is the emergence of a "hourglass fermion" surface state protected by the nonsymmorphic symmetry. Such a state has already been observed experimentally. We propose a simple model possessing the hourglass fermion surface state. The model is constructing by stacking the quantum-spin-Hall insulators with the interlayer coupling introduced so as to preserve the nonsymmorphic symmetry and the time reversal symmetry. The Dirac theory is also derived, whose analytical results reproduce the hourglass fermion surface state remarkably well. Furthermore, we discuss how the hourglass state is destroyed by introducing perturbations based on the symmetry analysis. Our results show that the hourglass fermion surface state is universal in the helical edge system with the nonsymmorphic symmetry.