Recent progress on disorder-induced topological phases
Topological states of matter in disordered systems without translation symmetry have attracted great interest in recent years. These states with topological characters are not only robust against certain disorders, but also can be counterintuitively induced by disorders from a topologically trivial phase in the clean limit. In this review, we summarize the current theoretical and experimental progress on disorder-induced topological phases in both condensed-matter and artificial systems. We first introduce the topological Anderson insulators (TAIs) induced by random disorders and their topological characterizations and experimental realizations. We then discuss various extensions of TAIs with unique localization phenomena in quasiperiodic and non-Hermitian systems. We also review the theoretical and experimental studies on the disorder-induced topology in dynamical and many-body systems, including topological Anderson-Thouless pumps, disordered correlated topological insulators and average-symmetry protected topological orders acting as interacting TAI phases. Finally, we conclude the review by highlighting potential directions for future explorations.
Authors
- Dan-Wei Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0933-5002)
- Ling-Zhi Tang
Institutions
- South China Normal University (CN)
- Macao Polytechnic University (MO)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of Physics Condensed Matter
- Published
- 2026-06-12
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-648x/ae7cca
- Primary Topic
- Topological Materials and Phenomena
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation of Guangdong Province