==== Front Sci AdvSci AdvSciAdvadvancesScience Advances2375-2548American Association for the Advancement of Science aat868510.1126/sciadv.aat8685Research ArticleResearch ArticlesSciAdv r-articlesPhysicsStructure and topology of band structures in the 1651 magnetic space groups http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8112-021XWatanabe Haruki 1*Po Hoi Chun 2*Vishwanath Ashvin 2†1 Department of Applied Physics, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan.2 Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.* These authors contributed equally to this work. † Corresponding author. Email: ashvinv@berkeley.edu8 2018 03 8 2018 4 8 eaat868512 4 2018 19 6 2018 Copyright © 2018 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).2018The AuthorsThis is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.Topological properties of band structures in magnetic materials are systematically studied using symmetry representations. The properties of electrons in magnetically ordered crystals are of interest both from the viewpoint of realizing novel topological phases, such as magnetic Weyl semimetals, and from the application perspective of creating energy-efficient memories. A systematic study of symmetry and topology in magnetic materials has been challenging given that there are 1651 magnetic space groups (MSGs). By using an efficient representation of allowed band structures, we obtain a systematic description of several basic properties of free electrons in all MSGs in three dimensions, as well as in the 528 magnetic layer groups relevant to two-dimensional magnetic materials. We compute constraints on electron fillings and band connectivity compatible with insulating behavior. In addition, by contrasting with atomic insulators, we identify band topology entailed by the symmetry transformation of bands, as determined by the MSG alone. We provide an application of our results to identifying topological semimetals arising in periodic arrangements of hedgehog-like magnetic textures. http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001National Science FoundationNSF DMR-1411343http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000893Simons Foundationhttp://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001691Japan Society for the Promotion of ScienceJSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP17K17678CopyeditorNielsen Marquez ==== Body INTRODUCTION The recent discovery of topological insulators and other topological phases (1) has revitalized the venerable subject of band theory. In addition to the explosion of understanding of different forms of band topology and how symmetries protect or prevent them, researchers are making rapid progress on several other fronts. For example, fundamental questions, such as the connection between electron count and insulating behavior (2–10), as well as the constraints imposed by crystal symmetries on the connectivity of bands (3–5, 10–17), have been resolved. New information has also been gleaned by contrasting real-space and momentum-space descriptions in all 230 crystal space groups (SGs) of nonmagnetic materials (3–5, 8–10, 15, 16, 18). Increasingly, attention is turning to electronic systems that combine magnetism with band topology. Here, a further panoply of novel topological phenomena is anticipated. Examples that scientists have already realized, to name just a few, include the quantized anomalous Hall effect in magnetic topological insulators (19, 20) and the topological Hall effect in skyrmion crystals (21–25). Researchers are also now studying magnetic Weyl semimetal candidates intensively (26–28). In addition to the fundamental physics interest of these novel phases, current-driven magnetic textures, such as domain walls or skyrmions, could be harnessed in technological applications, for example, in the development of energy-efficient memory devices (29). Despite these strong motivations, the pace of discovery of magnetic topological materials has been relatively slow compared to their nonmagnetic counterparts. There are at least two reasons for this: First, magnetic materials are necessarily correlated, making the prediction of the magnetic structure and properties more challenging. Consequently, the set of well-characterized magnetic materials is relatively small. Second, the sheer complexity of combining magnetic structures with SGs makes an exhaustive study of the theoretical possibilities daunting. There are a total of 1651 different magnetic SGs (MSGs), which were only tabulated in the 1950s. In addition, unlike for the 230 nonmagnetic SGs (2, 30), relevant group-representation information is not always readily available. Here, we will tackle the second problem by providing a systematic understanding of electronic band structures (BSs) in the 1651 MSGs. Inspired by the recent synthesis of atomically thin magnets (31, 32), we also discuss the 528 magnetic layer groups (MLGs), relevant to two-dimensional (2D) magnetic materials. We report the results for three key properties, which are tabulated in section S1 and described below. First, we determine electron fillings that can be compatible with insulating behavior in all MSGs. The electron count is a fundamental characteristic of an electronic crystal. The presence of nonsymmorphic symmetries, such as glides and screws, enforces connectivity of bands that raises the required fillings for realizing band insulators (3–5, 12). These conditions may be useful in the search for magnetic Weyl semimetals, as one can target fillings that, while forbidding band insulators, are nonetheless consistent with nodal-point Fermi surfaces (13, 33, 34). Next, it has long been known that representations of energy levels at high-symmetry points must connect in specific ways in obtaining a set of isolated bands (11). We can view this as a refinement of the filling condition, which imposes additional constraints on BSs (14–17). The solutions to these constraints are most conveniently represented as a vector space (but with integer coefficients, so more accurately a “lattice” in mathematical terminology) (14, 15, 35) and are described using only a handful of basis vectors whose precise number dBS depends on the MSG. Last, we contrast the general BSs defined in the momentum space with the subset of those obtained from “atomic insulators” (AIs), in which electrons are tightly bound to sites in the lattice furnishing orbitals with different symmetries. Significantly, we find that this produces a vector space of the same dimension, which in mathematical terms, is summarized by the equality dAI = dBS. However, the bases for BSs and AIs do not generally coincide, and we determine the classes of BSs that cannot be reduced to any atomic limit. This leads to an obstruction to finding symmetric localized Wannier states (36, 37) and corresponds to a band topology that one can diagnose without detailed information about the electronic wave functions. We give an example of how this can be used to diagnose topological semimetals and also an example of a nodal-line semimetal diagnosed through its filling. The latter consists of hedgehog-antihedgehog magnetic order with a lone electron at the core of these defects, leading to a gapless behavior. We note that scientists have recently made a great deal of progress on related problems for nonmagnetic SGs (9, 10, 15, 16, 18). However, in the case of MSGs, these problems have only been attacked in certain restricted settings, for example, in generalizing the parity criterion (38) in order to identify Weyl semimetals, Chern insulators, and axion insulators (35, 39–42). In this study, we carry out a systematic study of all MSGs. In particular, it is important to emphasize that, although our approach has several features in common with K-theory–based classifications (14, 43–45), we do not seek to fully classify crystalline electronic phases here. As discussed in a recent insightful work (14) for 2D wallpaper groups, part of such a general classification includes band structure connectivities, a problem that has been posed since the early days of band theory (11). Using a result we proved below, we construct a framework that greatly simplifies these computations, which enables an extension of previous results (9, 10, 15) to the physically important case of MSGs. In addition, topological distinctions revealed using our symmetry-based indicators fit naturally into well-established frameworks (14, 15, 43, 45) and remain stable upon the addition of trivial degrees of freedom. Yet, our approach is inherently symmetry-based, and so for crystals with low symmetry, that is, with only lattice translations, one cannot diagnose topological insulators without further knowledge of the wave functions. A similar caveat pertains to the complementary quantum chemistry approach of (16), which elaborates on the theory developed by (3), and takes a specific set of orbitals at fixed locations in the crystal as an input. While convenient for representing quantum chemistry information, it is less suited to capture stable topological distinctions that survive the inclusion of additional trivial bands. In addition, one forgoes the simplification arising from the vector space such as representation of energy bands that allowed us to generate results for all MSGs, while the work of Bradlyn et al. (16) is currently confined to just the 230 SGs. MATERIALS AND METHODS Magnetic BSs Let us begin by reviewing some background materials concerning electronic BSs arising from a magnetic material. There are a total of 1651 MSGs and 528 MLGs (2, 30, 46–48). Among the 1651 MSGs, 230 of them were identical to SGs, in which only unitary spatial symmetries were considered (type I MSGs). All other MSGs had an equal number of unitary and antiunitary elements: M=G+A. The unitary part G was identical to 1 of the 230 SGs, and the antiunitary part A could be generally written in the form T~G, where T~≡Tg0 is the product of a spatial operation g0 and time reversal (TR) T. When g0 belongs to G, the MSG is simply the direct product of an SG G and Z2T. This led to another 230 MSGs, one for each SG, that are called type II. When g0 is not an element of G, there are two types further differentiated by whether g0 is a pure translation (type IV) or not (type III). For type II to IV MSGs, the little group of k and the site-symmetry group of x may also have an antiunitary part, in addition to the usual unitary part. Note that in the literature [for example, (49)], our definition of type III and IV MSGs are sometimes called type IIIa and IIIb, respectively. In addition, there are two common labeling schemes for MSGs: Opechowski-Guccione and Belov-Neronova-Smirnova (BNS). In this study, we followed the BNS notation, where an MSG was labeled by a pair of integers written as S. L, with S corresponding to 1 of the 230 SG and L corresponding to an extra label to differentiate between different magnetic descendants. [Refer to, for example, (50) for the precise meaning of these numbers.] Next, we introduced a general formalism for the efficient analysis of BS properties based on representations of the little group (14, 15, 35). Our main focus here was to address how the formalism developed for SGs could be readily applied to MSGs. We defined a BS as a set of bands isolated from others by band gaps above and below at all high-symmetry momenta, where by a high-symmetry momentum, we referred to a k in the Brillouin zone at which the unitary part of the little group, Gk, is necessarily larger than the translation subgroup T. In 3D, they can be high-symmetry points, lines, or planes. A BS can be characterized by the set of nonnegative integers n={nkα} that count the number of times an irreducible representation (irrep) ukα of Gk appears. As we are interested in systems of spinful electrons, the irreps ukα here are generally projective because of the spin-1/2 nature of electrons (also called “double-valued”). Since {nkα} cannot be changed smoothly without gap closing or symmetry breaking, n={nkα} serves as “topological invariants” defined for each BS. The integers n={nkα} cannot be chosen freely, since symmetries demand that they satisfy a collection of compatibility relations (2, 11). Since G is a subgroup of M=G+A, the full list of compatibility relation C imposed on an M-symmetric BS can be split into two sets, CG arising from G and C~A from A. Let us denote by {BS}physG and {BS}phys the set of all n’s satisfying CG and C, respectively. Here, the subscript “phys” indicates that all nkα’s in n={nkα} are non-negative, which is required for interpreting them as the multiplicities of irreps in a physical BS. We will introduce another set {BS}(G) that relaxes this nonnegative condition later. Note that {BS}physG and {BS}phys differed only in the imposition of C~A. In general, the antiunitary part A requires a pairing of b∈{BS}physG with another b′∈{BS}physG, unless b itself is already symmetric under T~. The pairing type can be easily determined using the Herring rule (2). (In section S4, we provided a more elaborated review on the compatibility relations and the Herring rule.) Band topology Having described some generalities about BSs, we now review how knowledge about the real space can inform band topology (9, 15). We defined the trivial class of BSs by the AIs, which were band insulators that were smoothly connected to a limit of vanishing hopping and hence were deformable to product states in real space. Equivalently, an AI admits symmetric, exponentially localized Wannier functions. To specify an AI, one should choose a position x in real space at which electrons were localized and the type of the orbital put on that site. All inequivalent choices of the position x were classified by Wyckoff positions (51). The orbital can be chosen from the (co-)irreps of the site-symmetry group of x (section S5). Given these choices, an M-invariant AI can be constructed by placing a symmetry-related orbital on each site of the M-symmetric lattice and filling them by electrons. The AI has a specific combination of irreps in the momentum space, which automatically satisfies C=CG+C~A. We listed up all distinct n’s corresponding to an AI by varying x and the orbital type. We listed up all distinct n’s corresponding to an AI by varying the position x and the orbital type, and we obtained {AI}phys, a subset of {BS}phys. If one replaces M above with G, one gets the set of G-symmetric AIs, {AI}physG. Now, we are ready to tell which elements of {BS}phys must be topologically nontrivial and which elements can be trivial. This can be judged by contrasting the elements of {BS}phys with those in {AI}phys. Namely, any b ∈ {BS}phys not belonging to {AI}phys necessarily features nontrivial band topology because, by definition, there does not exist any atomic limit of the BS with the same combinations of irreps. This is a sufficient (but not necessary) condition to be topologically nontrivial: Here, we exclusively focused on the band topology that can be diagnosed by the set of irreps at high-symmetry momenta. The simplest way of exploring the nontrivial elements of {BS}phys is thus to consider the complement of {AI}phys in {BS}phys, as in (15) and (52). However, this set has a complicated mathematical structure. To simplify the analysis, we allowed for the formal subtraction of bands and extended the values of nkα to any integer, including the negative ones, à la a K-theory analysis. {BS}phys then becomes an abelian group {BS}=ZdBS (known as a “lattice” in the mathematical nomenclature) (14, 15, 35). In other words, there are dBS basis “vectors” {bi}i=1dBS, and {BS} can be expressed as {∑i=1dBSmibi|mi∈Z}. Similarly, by allowing negative integers when taking superposition of AIs, we got another abelian group {AI}=ZdAI, which is a subgroup of {BS}. The band topology we are interested in is now encoded in the quotient group XBS≡{BS}/{AI}(1) dubbed the symmetry-based indicator of band topology (15). As we will see shortly, the quotient group is always a finite abelian group and hence must be a product of the form ∏iZni. Constructing BSs from AIs To compute XBS, the natural first step was to identify C~A, the extra compatibility relations enforced by the antiunitary symmetries. Contrary to this expectation, we now show that, on the basis of our previous results on SGs, one can directly compute {BS} and XBS for any MSG M without deriving C~A. This served to demonstrate the power of the present approach: Symmetry content and connectivity of BSs could be readily extracted without the large overheads mandated by the conventional approach. To this end, we first revisited the relevant aspects of the theory for an SG G. By definition, {AI}G is a subgroup of {BS}G, and therefore, a priori, it could be the case that dAIG