Many-body higher-order topological invariant for Cn -symmetric insulators

Higher-order topological insulators in two spatial dimensions display fractional corner charges. While fractional charges in one dimension are known to be captured by a many-body bulk invariant, computed by the Resta formula, a many-body bulk invariant for higher-order topology and the corresponding fractional corner charges remains elusive despite several attempts. Inspired by recent work by Tada and Oshikawa [arXiv:2302.00800], we propose a well-defined, many-body bulk invariant for Cₙ-symmetric higher-order topological insulators that is valid for both noninteracting and interacting systems. Instead of relating them to the bulk quadrupole moment as was previously done, we show that in the presence of Cₙ rotational symmetry, this bulk invariant can be directly identified with quantized fractional corner charges. In particular, we prove that the corner charge is quantized as $e/n$ with Cₙ symmetry, leading to a Zₙ classification for higher-order topological insulators in two dimensions.