Flat bands and topological phase transition in entangled Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chains

Abstract: Flat, non-dispersive bands and topological phase transition in multiple Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) chains, cross-linked via periodically arranged nodal points are explored within a tight binding framework. We give analytic prescription, based on a real space decimation scheme, that extracts the energy eigenvalues corresponding to the flat bands along with their degeneracy. The topological phase transition is confirmed through the existence of quantized Zak phase for all the Bloch bands, and the edge states that are protected by chiral symmetry, consistent with the bulk-boundary correspondence. In addition to the edge states, the entangled systems are shown to give rise to clusters of localized eigenstates in the bulk of the system, in contrast to a purely one dimensional SSH system.