Photonic obstructed atomic insulator

Abstract

Topological quantum chemistry (TQC) classifies the topological phases by real-space invariants in which obstructed atomic insulators belong to the trivial case but sometimes show the feature of higher-order topological insulator. Here, for a two-dimensional magnetic photonic obstructed atomic insulator, we show that the emergence of corner states is associated with the Wyckoff positions. In such a square lattice with four +$M$ elements and four -$M$ elements, corner states appear when the superlattice exposes $2b$ Wyckoff positions. And the corner states will decrease when the number of exposed $2b$ Wyckoff positions decreases and disappears when $2b$ Wyckoff positions no longer stand at the edge. By arranging all the magnetic rods into one magnetization direction, we find that time-reversal symmetry is not important for corner states. Our finding indicates that the real-space distribution of atoms determines the feature of higher-order topological insulators for obstructed atomic insulators in TQC.