Effect of coordination on topological phases on self-similar structures

Abstract

Topologically non-trivial phases have recently been reported on self-similar structures. Here, we investigate the effect of local structure, specifically the role of the coordination number, on the topological phases on self-similar structures embedded in two dimensions. We study a geometry dependent model on two self-similar structures having different coordination numbers, constructed from the Sierpinski Gasket. For different non-spatial symmetries present in the system, we numerically study and compare the phases on both the structures. We characterize these phases by the localization properties of the single-particle states, their robustness to disorder, and by using a real-space topological index. We find that both the structures host topologically non-trivial phases and the phase diagrams are different on the two structures. This suggests that, in order to extend the present classification scheme of topological phases to non-periodic structures, one should use a framework which explicitly takes the coordination of sites into account.