Topological properties of domain walls in antiferromagnetic topological insulators

Abstract: Motivated by the study of stacking faults in weak topological insulators and the observation of magnetic domain walls in MnBi${2n}$Te${3n+1}$, we explore the topological properties of domain walls in antiferromagnetic topological insulators. We develop two tight-binding models: one based on a strong topological insulator with antiferromagnetic order, and another built from stacked Chern insulators with alternating Chern numbers. Both systems are dual topological insulators, i.e. they are at the same time antiferromagnetic and crystalline topological insulators, but differ by the type of mirror symmetry protecting the crystalline phase: spinful versus spinless. We show that in the spinful case the mirror Chern number is invariant under time reversal and that it changes sign in the spinless case. This influences the properties of the two systems in the presence of a magnetic domain wall, which is created in the system when the magnetization is flipped via a time-reversal transformation. In the first type, the bulk of the domain wall is gapped but the defect will host chiral edge states when it ends on an external ferromagnetic surface. In the second, due to the flip in the mirror Chern number, the domain wall is a two-dimensional embedded semimetal with 2D gapless states protected by mirror symmetry. Our results show that domain walls can be a source of non-trivial topology, allowing to generate and manipulate gapless states within the bulk and the ferromagnetic surfaces of antiferromagnetic topological insulators.