Influence of rotational symmetry breaking on topological insulators

This article describes influence of symmetry breaking in topological insulators. In this study, we examined the effect of spatial symmetry breaking on the time-reversal invariant topological insulators with a rhombohedral crystal structure. This effect was verified by means of the Green function method. Breakdown of spatial symmetry brings the change of the topological number of the bulk. Accordingly, surface changes singular to nonsingular interface. In this process, fully gapped states are realized by violating the time-reversal symmetry, which leads to mass gap. Our results indicated that the surface acted as the interface of a topological phase transition.