Thermal instability of protected end states in a one-dimensional topological insulator

Abstract

We have studied the dynamical thermal effects on the protected end states of a topological insulator (TI) when it is considered as an open quantum system in interaction with a noisy environment at a certain temperature $T$. As a result, we find that protected end states in a TI become unstable and decay with time. Very remarkably, the interaction with the thermal environment (fermion-boson) respects chiral symmetry, which is the symmetry responsible for the protection (robustness) of the end states in this TI when it is isolated from the environment. Therefore, this mechanism makes end states unstable while preserving their protecting symmetry. Our results have immediate practical implications in recently proposed simulations of TIs using cold atoms in optical lattices. Accordingly, we have computed lifetimes of topological end states for these physical implementations that are useful to make those experiments realistic.