Phase Transition of Topological Index driven by Dephasing

Abstract: We study topological insulators under dephasing noise. With examples of both a $2d$ Chern insulator and a $3d$ topological insulator protected by time-reversal symmetry, we demonstrate that there is a phase transition at finite dephasing strength between phases with nontrivial and trivial topological indices. Here the topological index is defined through the correlation matrix. The transition can be diagnosed through the spectrum of the whole correlation matrix or of a local subsystem. Interestingly, even if the topological insulator is very close to the topological-trivial critical point in its Hamiltonian, it still takes finite strength of dephasing to change the topological index, suggesting the robustness of topological insulators under dephasing. In the case of Chern insulator, this robustness of the phase with nontrivial Chern number persists near the critical point between the topological and Anderson insulator, which is tuned by the strength of disorder in the Hamiltonian.