Topological invariants for interface modes

Abstract: We consider topologically non-trivial interface Hamiltonians, which find several applications in materials science and geophysical fluid flows. The non-trivial topology manifests itself in the existence of topologically protected, asymmetric edge states at the interface between two two-dimensional half spaces in different topological phases. It is characterized by a quantized interface conductivity. The objective of this paper is to compute such a conductivity and show its stability under perturbations. We present two methods. The first one computes the conductivity using the winding number of branches of absolutely continuous spectrum of the interface Hamiltonian. This calculation is independent of any bulk properties but requires a sufficient understanding of the spectral decomposition of the Hamiltonian. In the fluid flow setting, it also applies in cases where the so-called bulk-interface correspondence fails. The second method establishes a bulk-interface correspondence between the interface conductivity and a so-called bulk-difference invariant. We introduce the bulk-difference invariants characterizing pairs of half spaces. We then relate the interface conductivity to the bulk-difference invariant by means of a Fedosov-H\"ormander formula, which computes the index of a related Fredholm operator. The two methods are used to compute invariants for representative $2\times2$ and $3\times3$ systems of equations that appear in the applications.