Edge states of the topological Anderson insulator

Abstract

The disorder-induced topological Anderson insulator (TAI) has a similar characteristic to a topological insulator, i.e. insulator in the bulk but conductor in the boundary. In the framework of an effective medium theory, we show that at the transition to TAI from a weaker disorder regime, the conditions for the edge states to exist are appropriately changed yet the physics remains unaltered. This then led us to explore the behavior of edge states at the domain wall of a TAI and a non-TAI through numerical simulations.