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arXiv:1007.3502 · Physical Review B

Interaction effects and quantum phase transitions in topological insulators

Christopher N. Varney, Kai Sun, Marcos Rigol, Victor M. Galitski

Published Sep 28, 2010• 142 citations
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Abstract

We study strong correlation effects in topological insulators via the Lanczos algorithm, which we utilize to calculate the exact many-particle ground-state wave function and its topological properties. We analyze the simple, noninteracting Haldane model on a honeycomb lattice with known topological properties and demonstrate that these properties are already evident in small clusters. Next, we consider interacting fermions by introducing repulsive nearest-neighbor interactions. A first-order quantum phase transition was discovered at finite interaction strength between the topological band insulator and a topologically trivial Mott insulating phase by use of the fidelity metric and the charge-density-wave structure factor. We construct the phase diagram at $T=0$ as a function of the interaction strength and the complex phase for the next-nearest-neighbor hoppings. Finally, we consider the Haldane model with interacting hard-core bosons, where no evidence for a topological phase is observed. An important general conclusion of our work is that despite the intrinsic nonlocality of topological phases their key topological properties manifest themselves already in small systems and therefore can be studied numerically via exact diagonalization and observed experimentally, e.g., with trapped ions and cold atoms in optical lattices.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.82.115125

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We study strong correlation effects in topological insulators via the Lanczos algorithm, which we utilize to calculate the exact many-particle ground-state wave function and its topological properties. We analyze the simple, noninteracting Haldane model on a honeycomb lattice with known topological properties and demonstrate that these properties are already evident in small clusters. Next, we consider interacting fermions by introducing repulsive nearest-neighbor interactions. A first-order quantum phase transition was discovered at finite interaction strength between the topological band insulator and a topologically trivial Mott insulating phase by use of the fidelity metric and the charge-density-wave structure factor. We construct the phase diagram at T=0T=0T=0 as a function of the interaction strength and the complex phase for the next-nearest-neighbor hoppings. Finally, we consider the Haldane model with interacting hard-core bosons, where no evidence for a topological phase is observed. An important general conclusion of our work is that despite the intrinsic nonlocality of topological phases their key topological properties manifest themselves already in small systems and therefore can be studied numerically via exact diagonalization and observed experimentally, e.g., with trapped ions and cold atoms in optical lattices.
We investigate the phase diagram of spinless fermions with nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor density-density interactions on the honeycomb lattice at half-filling. Using exact diagonalization techniques of the full Hamiltonian and constrained subspaces, combined with a careful choice of finite-size clusters, we determine the different charge orderings that occur for large interactions. In this regime, we find a two-sublattice N\'eel-like state, a charge modulated state with a tripling of the unit cell, a zigzag phase, and a charge ordered state with a 12-site unit cell we call N\'eel domain wall crystal, as well as a region of phase separation for attractive interactions. A sizable region of the phase diagram is classically degenerate, but it remains unclear whether an order-by-disorder mechanism will lift the degeneracy. For intermediate repulsion, we find evidence for a Kekul\'e or plaquette bond-order wave phase. We also investigate the possibility of a spontaneous Chern insulator phase (dubbed topological Mott insulator), as previously put forward by several mean-field studies. Although we are unable to detect convincing evidence for this phase based on energy spectra and order parameters, we find an enhancement of current-current correlations with the expected spatial structure compared to the noninteracting situation. While for the studied $t\ensuremath{-}{V}_{1}\ensuremath{-}{V}_{2}$ model, the phase transition to the putative topological Mott insulator is preempted by the phase transitions to the various ordered states, our findings might hint at the possibility for a topological Mott insulator in an enlarged Hamiltonian parameter space, where the competing phases are suppressed.
Haldane model is a noninteracting model for spinless fermions showing nontrivial topological properties. Effect of the electron-electron interaction on the topological phase poses an intriguing question. By means of the Hartree-Fock mean field, the exact diagonalization and the constrained-path Monte Carlo methods we mapped out the phase diagram of the interacting Haldane model. It is found that interaction breaks down the topological phase and drives the system into the charge-density-wave state. Sequence of the two transitions depends on the strength of next-nearest-neighbor hopping. Many-body Chern number and the charge excitation gap are used to characterize the topological transition.
We investigate the quantum many-body instabilities of the extended Hubbard model for spinless fermions on the honeycomb lattice with repulsive nearest-neighbor and second-nearest-neighbor density-density interactions. Recent exact diagonalization and infinite density matrix renormalization group results suggest that a putative topological Mott insulator phase driven by the second-nearest-neighbor repulsion is suppressed, while other numerically exact approaches support the topological Mott insulator scenario. In the present work, we employ the functional renormalization group (fRG) for correlated fermionic systems. Our fRG results hint at a strong suppression of the scattering processes stabilizing the topological Mott insulator. From analyzing the effects of fermionic fluctuations, we obtain a phase diagram, which is the result of the competition of various charge ordering instabilities.
In this work we consider a system of spinless fermions with nearest and next-to-nearest neighbor repulsive Hubbard interactions on a honeycomb lattice, and propose and analyze a realistic scheme for analog quantum simulation of this model with cold atoms in a two-dimensional hexagonal optical lattice. To this end, we first derive the zero-temperature phase diagram of the interacting model within a mean-field theory treatment. We show that besides a semimetallic and a charge-density-wave ordered phase, the system exhibits a quantum anomalous Hall phase, which is generated dynamically, i.e., purely as a result of the repulsive fermionic interactions and in the absence of any external gauge fields. We establish the topological nature of this dynamically created Mott-insulating phase by the numerical calculation of a Chern number, and we study the possibility of coexistence of this phase with any of the other phases characterized by local order parameters. Based on the knowledge of the mean-field phase diagram, we then discuss in detail how the interacting Hamiltonian can be engineered effectively by state-of-the-art experimental techniques for laser dressing of cold fermionic ground-state atoms with electronically excited Rydberg states that exhibit strong dipolar interactions.
We study a one-dimensional (1D) interacting topological model by means of the exact diagonalization method. The topological properties are first examined with the existence of the edge states at half-filling. We find that the topological phases are not only robust to small repulsive interactions, but also are stabilized by small attractive interactions, and also finite repulsive interaction can drive a topological nontrivial phase into a trivial one while the attractive interaction can drive a trivial phase into a nontrivial one. Next we calculate the Berry phase and parity of the bulk system and find that they are equivalent in characterizing the topological phases. With them we obtain the critical interaction strengths and construct part of the phase diagram in the parameters' space. Finally we discuss the effective Hamiltonian at the large-UUU limit and provide an additional understanding of the numerical results. These results could be realized experimentally using cold atoms trapped in the 1D optical lattice.
We investigate the ground-state phase diagram of the spinless Haldane-Hubbard model in the presence of quenched disorder, contrasting results obtained from both exact diagonalization and the density matrix renormalization group, applied to a honeycomb cylinder. The interplay of disorder, interactions, and topology gives rise to a rich phase diagram and, in particular, highlights the possibility of a disorder-driven trivial-to-topological transition in the presence of finite interactions. That is, the topological Anderson insulator, demonstrated in noninteracting settings, is shown to be stable in the presence of sufficiently small interactions before a charge density wave Mott insulator sets in. We further promote a finite-size analysis of the transition to the ordered state in the presence of disorder, finding a mixed character of first- and second-order transitions in finite lattices, tied to the specific conditions of disorder realizations and boundary conditions used.