Topological crystalline insulators in transition metal oxides.

Abstract

Topological crystalline insulators possess electronic states protected by crystal symmetries, rather than time-reversal symmetry. We show that the transition metal oxides with heavy transition metals are able to support nontrivial band topology resulting from mirror symmetry of the lattice. As an example, we consider pyrochlore oxides of the form A2M2O7. As a function of spin-orbit coupling strength, we find two Z2 topological insulator phases can be distinguished from each other by their mirror Chern numbers, indicating a different topological crystalline insulators. We also derive an effective k·p Hamiltonian, similar to the model introduced for Pb(1-x)Sn(x)Te, and discuss the effect of an on-site Hubbard interaction on the topological crystalline insulator phase using slave-rotor mean-field theory, which predicts new classes of topological quantum spin liquids.