Antiferromagnetic crystalline topological insulators

Abstract

The gapless surface Dirac cone of time reversal invariant topological insulators is protected by time reversal symmetry due to the Kramers' theorem. Spin degree of freedom is usually required since Kramers' theorem only guarantees double degeneracy for spinful fermions, but not for spinless fermions. In this paper, we present an antiferromagnetic spinless model, which breaks time reversal symmetry. Similar to time reversal invariant topological insulators, this model possesses a topologically non-trivial phase with a single surface Dirac cone, which is protected by the combination of time reversal and translation operation. Our results show that in magnetic crystals, a single Dirac cone can exist on the surface even without any spin degree of freedom and spin-orbit coupling.