Theory of interacting topological crystalline insulators

We study the effect of electron interactions in topological crystalline insulators (TCIs) protected by mirror symmetry, which are realized in the SnTe material class and host multi-valley Dirac fermion surface states. We find that interactions reduce the integer classification of noninteracting TCIs in three dimensions, indexed by the mirror Chern number, to a finite group $Z_8$. In particular, we explicitly construct a microscopic interaction Hamiltonian to gap 8 flavors of Dirac fermions on the TCI surface, while preserving the mirror symmetry. Our construction builds on interacting edge states of $U(1)\times Z_2$ symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases of fermions in two dimensions, which we classify. Our work reveals a deep connection between 3D topological phases protected by spatial symmetries and 2D topological phases protected by internal symmetries.

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