Double Dirac Cone in Band Structures of Periodic Schrödinger Operators
Abstract
Dirac cones are conical singularities that occur near the degenerate points in band structures. Such singularities result in enormous unusual phenomena of the corresponding physical systems. This work investigates double Dirac cones that occur in the vicinity of a fourfold degenerate point in the band structures of certain operators. It is known that such degeneracy originates in the symmetries of the Hamiltonian. We use two dimensional periodic Schrödinger operators with novel designed symmetries as our prototype. First, we characterize admissible potentials, termed as super honeycomb lattice potentials. They are honeycomb lattices potentials with a key additional translation symmetry. It is rigorously justified that Schrödinger operators with such potentials almost guarantee the existence of double Dirac cones on the bands at the point, the origin of the Brillouin zone. We further show that the additional translation symmetry is an indispensable ingredient by a perturbation analysis. Indeed, the double cones disappear if the additional translation symmetry is broken. Many numerical simulations are provided, which agree well with our analysis.
MSCcodes: 35Q40, 35Q60, 35P99
Keywords: periodic Schrödinger operator, super honeycomb lattice, fourfold degeneracy, double Dirac cone
1 Introduction
The Dirac cone is a conical structure near the degenerate point on the energy bands. It is deeply rooted in the symmetries of operators. Single Dirac cones near a twofold degenerate point have been found in many physical systems. It is a hallmark and reveals the underlying mechanism of versatile electronic or photonic properties of topological materials [7, 10, 15, 26, 19]. A typical system possessing the single Dirac cone is the two-dimensional material–graphene, which has the atomic honeycomb lattice made of carbon atoms [21, 20, 25]. Its great success in many fields has brought the blooming time for both experimental and theoretical understanding of such degenerate points on spectral bands. Meanwhile, other types of conically degenerate points were reported. Among those, double Dirac cones have attracted considerable attention [31, 34]. Such conical structures consist of two cones that share a fourfold degenerate apex. Due to the higher degeneracy, the corresponding wave patterns and physical properties are different from those in systems possessing single Dirac cones [30, 24, 33, 22]. It is known that the nontrivial topology of energy bands and corresponding significant properties of materials are born from the singularity. Thus, investigating the underlying symmetries and degeneracy related to the double Dirac cone will help us better understand the unusual physical properties.
Regarding single Dirac cones, a lot of analyses about the related time reversal symmetric operators have been done through different models and vehicles, especially when the material has a honeycomb structure. The tight-binding approximation was first developed by Wallace to describe the band structure of graphite [29], and later used systematically by others [27, 18]. The perturbation theory and multiscale analysis help to solve shallow potential cases successfully [1, 16]. One pioneering rigorous result on characterizing the honeycomb potentials and demonstrations of the existence of Dirac points was given by Fefferman and Weinstein [13]. They paved the way to rigorously analyzing such degenerate spectral points by combining Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction, perturbation theories, and multidimensional complex analysis. Based on their results, many other problems were solved such as the evolution of wave packets spectrally concentrated near Dirac points [14], edge states and valley Hall effect [8], lower dimensional degenerate points [12] and threefold Weyl points in the three-dimensional problems [17]. Ammari and collaborators did a lot of work on the Dirac cone and edge states using layer potential theory in the subwavelength regime [3, 4, 2]. Besides, the group representation theory has been used by Berkolaiko and Comech to describe the symmetric structure [6]. Despite the aforementioned progress in this blooming area, there is rarely any rigorous result on double Dirac cones as those in single Dirac cones.
In this paper, we investigate the two dimensional Schrödinger operator with specially structured such that has a double Dirac cone on its energy surfaces. Our goal is to find the precise mathematical description of this special kind of , and establish the rigorous proof about the existence of the double Dirac cone. We first define a class of potentials , termed as the super honeycomb lattice potentials. They are honeycomb lattice potentials equipped with an additional translation symmetry. Then we prove that such is enough for the existence of a double Dirac cone at point, the origin of the Brillouin zone, as is stated in the main theorem Theorem 3.1. To achieve our goal, we utilize Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction, perturbation theory, and spectral theories about infinite dimensional linear operators. The rigorous analysis is inspired by pioneering works on single Dirac cones by Fefferman and Weinstein [13]. However, due to higher multiplicity and the additional symmetry, we need a more delicate decomposition of the working function spaces and the bifurcation matrix, see Sections 2.3 and 3.2. We also show that the extra translation symmetry is indispensable. Namely, a small perturbation that breaks this symmetry leads to the separation of the fourfold degeneracy and disappearance of the double cone in the band structure, see Section 4. Besides, we give two typical examples of potentials that are in the class of admissible potentials. Numerical simulations are provided to support our analysis. Our results will shine a light on the study of more complicated symmetries of operators and higher degeneracy on energy bands.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides the preliminaries. The definition of super honeycomb lattice potentials and the decomposition of the working function space are given based on symmetries. In Section 3, we state and prove the main theorem–the existence of the double Dirac cone at the point of the Schrödinger operator with a super honeycomb lattice. Inspired by [13], the proof is divided into two main parts. First, we show that the fourfold degeneracy at the point leads to a double cone in the vicinity under proper assumptions. Secondly, we justify the assumptions for shallow potentials and then extend the shallow potentials to generic potentials. In Section 4, we discuss the band structures under perturbations which break the additional translation symmetry. The double Dirac cone separates into two parts and a local energy gap appears near the point. At the end, corresponding numerical simulations for the two typical potentials are given in Section 5.
2 Super honeycomb lattice potential and symmetries
Symmetries of an operator are the origin of many novel properties of its spectrum. In this section, we introduce a large class of potentials, termed as super honeycomb lattice potentials, which are characterized by several symmetries. Their properties and corresponding spectral theory are discussed.
2.1 Super honeycomb lattice potentials
We first introduce the parity, complex-conjugation, and rotation operators for a function defined in as below:
where
(2.1) |
represents the clockwise rotation by an angle of in and its Hermitian represents the anticlockwise rotation. A function is called invariant (or parity symmetric) if , and similar for invariant (or conjugation symmetric) and invariant (or rotation symmetric). Besides, being invariant is also called having the time reversal symmetry. In this work, we are interested in , so we omit the subscript, i.e., and for simplicity.
We also use the following notation for the translation operator of a nonzero vector in this article:
In this work we are interested in the spectra of with the potential being equipped with the above symmetries. Namely, we have the following definitions.
Definition 2.1.
is called a honeycomb lattice potential, if
-
1.
is real and even,
-
2.
is -invariant,
-
3.
has a period , and thus with .
Remark 2.2.
All these three properties are discussed in , that is to say, is valid almost everywhere. The following discussion about super honeycomb lattice potential is also in in the same way.
Therefore, the non-relativistic Schödinger operator has time reversal symmetry, rotation symmetry, and translation symmetry if is a honeycomb lattice potential. The honeycomb lattice can refer to the blue lattice in Figure 1. As shown in this Figure, the black lattice is a honeycomb lattice, too. But it has an extra translation symmetry with periods and , where
(2.2) |
We call it a super honeycomb lattice because of this additional symmetry.


Definition 2.3.
By definitions, a super honeycomb lattice potential is a honeycomb lattice potential with an additional translation symmetry. In other words, it has a smaller lattice structure. Since in applications we need to break this symmetries to obtain bands with different topological indices [5, 24], see also Figure 2. We still consider the super honeycomb lattice potential in the bigger lattice structure.
We remark that the non-degeneracy condition (2.3) in the definition ensures the lowest Fourier coefficients of do not vanish. As a consequence, the degeneracy occurs at bands. While higher bands should be considered if the non-degeneracy condition does not hold, which will be investigated in future works.
Here we give a typical example of super honeycomb lattice potentials which is a dimerization of a honeycomb lattice potential. It is a more general mathematical construction of the case studied in [31]. Our approach is first dimerizing in one direction, and then applying rotations to get the final results. Beginning from a honeycomb lattice potential, there should be three directions for dimerization: , , and . Thus, the following steps are needed to construct the dimer model.
Assume that is a function such that is a honeycomb lattice potential, to be specific:
(2.4) |
First dimerize in the direction:
(2.5) |
Here is the distance ratio for dimers. Then rotates the obtained :
(2.6) |
is the dimer model we want. Using (2.4)-(2.6), it is easy to check the conclusion below.
Proposition 2.4.
Any constructed by the above steps is a super honeycomb lattice potential.
Figure 2 shows a discrete example.



Before all the detailed analysis of the energy surfaces of Schrödinger operators with super honeycomb lattice potentials, we try to first explain our method using symmetries. If is a super honeycomb lattice potential, the operator has following properties.
Lemma 2.5.
Assume that is a super honeycomb lattice potential, then
Proof Take as an example and others are the same. For any ,
because is even, and the Laplace operator is rotation invariant.
The spectrum of on is equivalent to such a union by Floquet-Bloch theorem:
where the notations are introduced in the following two subsections. is as in (2.12). Thus, finding eigenvalues of on is transformed into finding eigenvalues of on . It is clear that - the operator corresponding to point are commutative with and . and are unitary and have three eigen-subspaces corresponding to different eigenvalues , , and on . Suppose and are any normalized eigenfunctions of with eigenvalues and , then:
where the inner product is as in (LABEL:eqn-innerPro). This tells that eigen-subspaces of are invaraint spaces of , and similar for . Thus, we can further decompose the spectrum of on to the spectrum of on these subspaces. Finally, we associate these subspaces by , , and and construct the degeneracy by the fact that they are commutative with .
2.2 A quick review of Floquet-Bloch theory
In this subsection, we review the Floquet-Bloch theory briefly. Let be linear independent vectors in . Its corresponding equilateral lattice is . Denote a unit cell
(2.7) |
Dual lattice of is
is the Brillouin zone. We can divide the eigenvalue problem of on into the following eigenvalue problems of traversing all the in the Brillouin zone [9, 28].
For , consider the eigenvalue problem
(2.8) |
(2.9) |
Let , where is periodic. Then (2.8) is equal to:
that is
Let . Thus, the eigenvalue problem can be rewritten as:
(2.10) |
(2.11) |
These energy bands have the following property [13].
Lemma 2.6.
Any is periodic and Lipschitz continuous. Its periods are and .
2.3 Function spaces and symmetries at point
For honeycomb lattice potentials, let . We concern about the spectrum at point most, so define
(2.12) |
is a Hilbert space under the inner product:
(2.13) |
Our aim is to find the fourfold degeneracy of on and the double Dirac cone in the vicinity of this highly degenerate point . We also define the limitation of in :
(2.14) |
A super honeycomb lattice potential is not only real and in , but also in
(2.15) |
where and are in the form of (2.2). It is easy to see that
(2.16) |
which means , or functions in have smaller periods than those in , as we have mentioned before. Dual vectors for such that are:
(2.17) |
First, we claim a decomposition of . This decomposition associates the extra translation symmetry with parity symmetry perfectly.
Proposition 2.7.
, where
(2.18) |
(2.19) |
And , and are eigen-spaces of with eigenvalues , and .
Proof It is obvious that , , and are subsets of . Also, it is easy to verify they are eigenspaces after some very simple calculations. Thus, only need to prove that they are orthogonal to each other and .
According to Fourier analysis,
(2.20) |
forms a Hilbert basis of . Similarly,
(2.21) |
From (2.17), (2.21) is equivalent to
(2.22) |
And therefore
(2.23) |
(2.24) |
The solutions of equations
exists: , which means is in , if and only if . It is easy to check, similarly, is in if and only if and is in if and only if . It follows that must be in one and only one of , and . This completes the proof.
Obviously, multiplications by elements in will map , , and into themselves. To some extent, this shows functions in , or to be specific, our potential possesses higher symmetry. Besides, the decomposition above has the following symmetry:
Proposition 2.8.
If is in , then is in , and vice versa.
Thus, the transformation takes and exactly to each other.
Secondly, we introduce rotation eigen-subspaces of , , and according to Fourier analysis. It is easy to get
(2.25) |
and
(2.26) |
Note the fact that:
Lemma 2.9.
are invariant function spaces of .
Proof From (2.26), clearly maps to itself. Since
is in , maps to itself, too. It is similar for with
The next proposition gives detailed properties of these spaces with respect to the transformation by separating , , and into eigenspaces of . This decomposition helps to associate the rotation symmetry with conjugation symmetry, as in Proposition 2.11.
Proposition 2.10.
The -invariant spaces , and have the following decomposition:
(2.27) |
(2.28) |
(2.29) |
where and , for and .
Proof Take (2.28) as an example, others are similar.
According to (2.23), let denote
, then
(2.30) |
are all in . Note that
have no integer solutions. Thus, we can define the equivalence relation: and equivalence class .
Now it is clear that:
(2.31) | |||
(2.32) | |||
(2.33) | |||
Again, given below is some information about symmetry properties between these subspaces.
Proposition 2.11.
If is in , then is in , and vice versa.
3 Double Dirac cone in the band structure
In this section, we shall state the main theorem of the fourfold degeneracy and doubly conical structures at the point for the two-dimensional non-relativistic Schödinger operator with super honeycomb lattice potentials. And a rigorous proof follows. Our proof is mainly inspired by the pioneering works [13, 12, 17, 23]. The proof is divided into two parts. First, we show that the fourfold degeneracy and a particular non-degenerate condition about eigenfunction are sufficient for the existence of double Dirac cones. Due to the higher degeneracy, we need deal with a more complicated bifurcation matrix. However, taking advantage of the higher symmetries and corresponding novel decomposition of working space in last section, we find that the bifurcation matrix can be pretty concise. Then we establish the existence of the degenerate point and the prescribed condition to complete the proof. Specifically, we first justify the prescribed conditions for shallow potentials, and then extend the justification for generic potentials.
3.1 Main theorem of double Dirac cone
The main theorem of our paper is as follows.
Theorem 3.1.
Let be a super honeycomb lattice potential in the sense of Definition 2.3. is the corresponding Schrödinger operator. Then the following is true for all , where A is a discrete subset of :
-
1.
there exists a real number such that is an eigenvalue of on of multiplicity four. Namely, there exists such that
(3.1) -
2.
there exists a number , such that for sufficiently small, the four spectral bands are of the form:
(3.2) where , .
(3.2) is the strict description of the double Dirac cone mathematically. Thus, this theorem tells that there always exist two tangent cones with the same apex for the non-degenerate super honeycomb lattice potentials.
The rest of this section is proof of this theorem. First, we give the conclusion that the fourfold degeneracy under some conditions always yields the double Dirac cone for super honeycomb lattice potentials. Thus, our attention should be paid mainly to the existence of this condition and fourfold degeneracy.
3.2 Fourfold degeneracy and double Dirac cone
Due to (2.5), if , then . That is to say, if does have an eigenvalue on of multiplicity one, then the fourfold degeneracy of on can be realized by symmetries. In this subsection, we want to verify that energy bands intersect conically in a small vicinity of this kind of eigenvalues under some necessary assumptions.
Proposition 3.2.
Remark 3.3.
The assumption that is of multiplicity four is necessary, because for higher degeneracy, obviously more branches are included, and thus the bands near the point will be more complex. Hence, we need to verify this condition in the later subsections.
Proof Using Proposition 2.8, 2.11 and 2.5, we easily deduce that is also a simple eigenvalue on , , with eigenfunctions , , and :
(3.3) |
Based on this, let us observe how the dispersion surfaces develop. First rewrite down the eigenvalue problem near . Assume is sufficiently small, the quasi-momentum eigenproblem (2.10)-(2.11) is:
(3.4) |
(3.5) |
Now let and
(3.6) |
with and . We use the same superscript and subscript to represent summation over this script throughout the article. Since is a closed subspace of , there exists projection operator from to and from to . It is trivial that .
Eigenvalue problem (3.4)-(3.5) is equivalent to (3.8)-(3.9). First, solve from (3.9, and then go back to (3.8) to obtain by linear approximation to complete the proof. This is exactly a Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction strategy.
Consider (3.9). Note that the resolvent operator is a bounded map from to . Accordingly,
Let . With sufficiently small, operator norm of should be less than 1, which means is invertible, and is bounded and we have
(3.10) |
Let . It is a bounded map from a sufficient small neighborhood of in to . Its norm is less than in the small neighborhood. Thus, . Rewrite (3.10) as
(3.11) |
Substituting into (3.8),
(3.12) |
This equation has a nonzero solution when the matrix
(3.13) |
has a nonzero solution, which is equivalent to
(3.14) |
Our aim is to solve from this equation. Divide into two parts and :
(3.15) |
(3.16) |
Fix , let be the solution of (3.14). Taking advantage of (2.6), should be Lipschitz continuous with on each branch of the solutions. Thus, is of order . That is to say, will only contribute a term of order to when . We first solve the truncated equation of (3.14):
(3.17) |
The here, is the linear truncation of the original question, and is called a bifurcation matrix.
We already have . Because that the subspaces are orthogonal, for . And it is also obvious that for all due to (3.3) and some simple calculations. Note that
(3.18) | ||||
Besides, we also have the following results.
Proposition 3.4.
For satisfies , ,
Proof Since the transformation is unit, if , we can attain that
Here is the rotation matrix. Because is not an eigenvalue of ,
Besides, this equation tells us that must be or an eigenvector of .
From the proof of this lemma, we know is an eigenvector of with eigenvalue . Thus it can be written as :
(3.19) |
We can choose an appropriate such that because .
Proposition 3.5.
For , each component of is in too.
Proof If , it can be written as , where . Therefore each component of is in too.
3.3 Fourfold degeneracy with shallow potentials
Due to the discussion in section 2.1 , the left thing to do is finding a single eigenvalue of on which is not an eigenvalue on and for all except a discrete set. In this subsection, we discuss the situation of sufficiently small.
First, take . The eigenvalue problem is
(3.23) |
(3.24) |
The operator is positive semi-definite on . It is quite easy to know its spectrum from Sturm-Liouville Theorem and Fourier series’ presentations. Pay attention to the first eight eigenvalues:
Obviously, a group of eigenfunctions for - are:
After some linear combinations, it is equivalent to:
(3.25) |
Secondly, for small enough, the eigenvalues of on must also be eigenvalues on or and separated from other eigenvalues by the continuity of the eigenvalues in . Thus, whether the fourfold degeneracy on and given by parity and conjugation symmetry and twofold degeneracy on given by conjugation symmetry will separate is most concerned about in this subsection.
Proposition 3.6.
Assume that is a super honeycomb lattice potential. And is the corresponding Schrödinger operator. Then there exists an such that, for all , there exists and satisfies:
-
1.
is an eigenvalue of on of multiplicity four,
-
2.
is a simple eigenvalue on with eigenfunction ,
-
3.
Remark 3.7.
From Lemma 2.5, we know that the conclusion 1 and 2 can deduce that is not an eigenvalue on .
Proof The eigenvalue problem with shallow potentials on is
(3.26) |
with . Due to discussion above and Lemma 2.6, only need to concern about the second to seventh eigenvalues.
Taking advantage of the discussion in section 2.1, we can limit this problem to each space , where and . Now . Analogous to the process in the proof of the last theorem, we rewrite the eigenvalue problem and divide it into two parts by projections.
Let , . Here and is the corresponding eigenfunction on in (3.25). . Introduce new projection operators from to and from to . Perform and on (3.26) to obtain
(3.27) |
and
(3.28) |
These two equations are equivalent to the original equation, so only need to solve them. Note that is a bounded operator from to . Thus,
(3.29) |
Assume is small enough, exists and is bounded. Use notation
is bounded in when is small enough. Substituting into (3.27), we have
(3.30) |
It is the same with:
Solve it to attain
(3.31) |
Thus, we solve out a of order . This means there exactly exists a Floquet-Bloch eigenpair with changing in order on .
First we take and , consider . Provided sufficiently small, is of order , therefore
Secondly, traversing all and , the six eigenpairs on give the second to seventh eigenvalues for the original problem on when is quite small. As mentioned above, four on , , and are bound to each other due to symmetry. The same for and . After some basic calculations, the on is
(3.32) |
where and . is the non-degeneracy condition of super honeycomb lattice potentials. It is obvious that . This explains these six branches will separate into fourfold and twofold for super honeycomb lattice potentials.
Proposition 3.8.
Proof It is easy to verify using (3.32).
3.4 Proof of the main theorem
Last subsection gives the result of shallow potentials, and this subsection briefly shows the method to verify Theorem 3.1, the generic case. The key strategy is constructing an analytic function on each , whose zero points are eigenvalues of on function spaces we concern. This function is actually the determinant of infinite dimensional linear operator by some renormalization using trace class. Because of the symmetry in Lemma 2.5 again, obviously the eigenvalue should exist simultaneously on , , and . And this eigenvalue should be different from those on other subspaces. The main work is focused on establishing this analytic function and prove the three conditions in Proposition 3.2.
Without loss of generality, let us assume that . On each , the eigenvalue problem is:
In this subsection, we consider . First consider with nonnegative real part . Our aim is to derive an operator whose determinant can be defined. Hence, we rewrite it as
(3.33) |
Note that is invertible. Let , then
(3.34) |
The eigenvalue on of is asymptotic to . Thus, it is a Hilbert-Schmidt operator:
Now a determinant for can be defined through a regularized way:
(3.35) |
The right-hand side is Fredholm determinant. It is well-defined because the regularized form:
(3.36) |
is a trace class.
We already have the following lemma.
Lemma 3.9.
For all and , the following is true:
-
1.
is an analytic mapping from to the space of Hilbert-Schmidt operators on ,
-
2.
The regularized determinant on
is analytic for both and with ,
-
3.
For real and nonnegative, is a eigenvalue for of multiplicity if and only if it is a zero of of multiplicity .
Therefore we first need to prove that except a discrete set in for , has a simple zero which is not a zero of and for all . Then prove that the eigenfunction on corresponding to this has nonzero , which is defined in Proposition 3.2. This is totally the same with the proof in [13], based on the previous subsection’s conclusion about shallow potentials. The only difference is about symmetry, which will not influence the proof.
4 Instability under symmetry breaking perturbations
We already show the existence of double cones for the operator with a super honeycomb lattice potential . This section focuses on what will happen if the additional translation symmetry of the potential is broken. In other words, we investigate the behaviour of the band structures of after some perturbations.
4.1 Perturbations breaking additional translation symmetry
Let us observe small perturbations which break this additional translation symmetry as in Figure 3. Shrinking and expanding the hexagons in super honeycomb lattice obtain the new lattices with red vertices. These perturbed lattices are not super honeycomb lattices any longer, and the four branches of energy bands intersecting under super honeycomb lattice potentials’ cases separate into two parts as in Figure 4.
Generally, let be a bounded real function that can be written in the form
(4.1) |
Obviously, is even, and it is -invariant.


After adding a perturbation of , the Schrödinger operator is
(4.2) |
The potential here has -symmetry, -symmetry and translation symmetry. It is still a honeycomb lattice potential, but it is no more a super honeycomb lattice potential .
Remark 4.1.
Different ways to break the additional translation symmetry shown above represented by shrinking and expanding the lattices give different topological properties, which can be characterised by the Chern number. And gluing these two different topological materials together, say, the shrunk one and expanded one, by a domain wall, generates a new material with interesting edge states. This phenomenon will be researched in our forthcoming paper.
4.2 Band Structures after perturbations
Consider the perturbed eigenvalue problem:
(4.3) |
(4.4) |
Here is in . Again, let and denote . We deduce that
(4.5) |
(4.6) |









The following theorem shows that the fourfold degeneracy and double Dirac cone are not protected after the symmetry breaking perturbations we discuss in last subsection.
Theorem 4.2.
Let be a super honeycomb lattice potential and W(x) be as in (4.1). is as in (4.2). Assume that:
-
1.
is an eigenvalue of on of multiplicity four:
-
2.
is a simple eigenvalue on with normalized eigenfunction ,
-
3.
,
-
4.
Then due to Proposition 3.2, there exists double Dirac cone in the vicinity of the point for . We claim that exists , such that for all , the to energy bands of will open a gap in a small neighbourhood of the point.
Proof Again, employ the Lyapunov- Schmidt reduction strategy. Without loss of generality, assume .
Now settle (4.5)-(4.5). Let and . . Then (4.5) is:
Apply the projection from to and from to to obtain the equation:
(4.7) |
and
(4.8) | ||||
After the analogous procedure to Proposition 3.2, Let
These operators exist and a bounded operator from to of order for () small enough. Now . Put it into (4.7), and apply inner production with . Finally, we get linear equations , where
The truncated linear part of , or the bifurcation matrix is
(4.9) |
The rest part is of order when is sufficiently small:
(4.10) |
Thus,
To calculate , first note that:
Proposition 4.3.
There exists a real number such that
(4.11) |
Proof , and are unit transformations. Because is even , real and -invariant, it is true that for any , :
(4.12) | ||||
(4.13) | ||||
First use (4.12) to obtain is real:
In addition,
Then take and . Since and are eigenfunctions with different eigenvalues for , . The same for , and . Then taking , using (4.1), due to the orthogonality of , and , we have
It is the same that for all . Taking advantage of the discussion above, it is trivial to verify the result.
Apply the equations (3.18) and the proposition above to get the bifurcation matrix after perturbations:
(4.14) |
Thus, . Now solve . Use notation (3.19) here. For small, with small enough too, this gives four branches of this eigenvalue problem are:
Therefore, it is obvious that if , these four bands will open a gap near for sufficiently small but nonzero, which means the fourfold degeneracy and double cone are not protected.
5 Numerical results
In this section, we numerically compute the band structures for a smooth and a piecewise constant potentials to illustrate our analysis in above sections. We use the Fourier collocation method [32] to solve eigenvalue problems.
In our numerical simulations, we take
and are as in (2.2). and are dual periods of and . and are dual periods of and .
The first super honeycomb lattice potential is of the form:
Also we introduce the perturbation, which violates the additional translation symmetry in Definition 2.3:
We compute the lowest seven bands of for , , and . The bands along the direction are displayed in Figure 5. Apparently, with the additional translation symmetry, a double Dirac cone occurs at the point. When the additional translation symmetry is broken, the fourfold degeneracy disappears and a local gap opens between the and bands.



We construct a piecewise constant potential as follows. In the unit cell , take
(5.1) |
And construct in by translation along and . Let and be in the form of (2.5) and (2.6). We compute the bands of for , , and respectively. The potentials are displayed in the top panel of Figure 4. The corresponding bands are displayed in the bottom panel accordingly. We remark that (b) corresponds to the super honeycomb case, i.e, possessing the additional translation symmetry. Apparently, this potential admits a fourfold degeneracy at the point and a double Dirac cone in the vicinity, but they disappear for other two cases.
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Borui Miao for interesting discussions and precious suggestions.
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