Topological band insulators without translational symmetry

Abstract: In the research of the topological band phases, the conventional wisdom is to start from the crystalline translational symmetry systems. Nevertheless, the translational symmetry is not always a necessary condition for the energy bands. Here we propose a systematic method of constructing the topological band insulators without translational symmetry in the amorphous systems. By way of the isospectral reduction approach from spectral graph theory, we reduce the structural-disordered systems formed by different multi-atomic cells into the isospectral effective periodic systems with the energy-dependent hoppings and potentials. We identify the topological band insulating phases with extended bulk states and topological in-gap edge states by the topological invariants of the reduced systems, density of states, and the commutation of the transfer matrix. In addition, when the building blocks of the two multi-atomic cells have different number of the lattice sites, our numerical calculations demonstrate that the existences of the flat band and the macroscopic bound states in the continuum in the amorphous systems. Our findings uncover a new arena for the exploration of the topological band states beyond translational symmetry systems paradigm.