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arXiv:1204.5682

Thin-Torus Limit of Fractional Topological Insulators

Bogdan Andrei Bernevig, Nicolas Regnault

Published Apr 25, 2012• 7 citations
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Abstract

We analytically and numerically analyze the one-dimensional "thin-torus" limit of Fractional Topological Insulators in a series of simple models exhibiting exactly flat bands with local hopping. These models are the one-dimensional limit of two dimensional Chern Insulators, and the Hubbard-type interactions projected into their lowest band take particularly simple forms. By exactly solving the many-body interacting spectrum of these models, we show that, just like in the Fractional Quantum Hall effect, the zero modes of the thin-torus limit are CDW states of occupation numbers satisfying generalized Pauli principles. As opposed to the FQH where the thin-torus CDW appear in orbital space, in the thin-torus FCI states, the CDW states are in real-space. We show the counting of the quasihole excitations in the energy spectrum cannot distinguish between a CDW state and a FQH state. However, by exactly computing the entanglement spectrum for the thin-torus states, we show that it can qualitatively and quantitatively distinguish between a CDW and a fractional topological state such as the FCI. We then discover a previously unknown separation of energy scales of the full FQH energy spectrum in the thin torus limit and find that Chern insulator models exhibiting strong isotropic FCI states have a similar structure in their thin-torus limit spectrum. We close by numerically computing the evolution of energy and entanglement spectra from the thin-torus to the isotropic limit. Our results can also be interpreted as an analysis of one-body, 1-dimensional topological insulators stabilized by inversion symmetry in the presence of interactions.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1204.5682

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We analytically and numerically analyze the one-dimensional "thin-torus" limit of Fractional Topological Insulators in a series of simple models exhibiting exactly flat bands with local hopping. These models are the one-dimensional limit of two dimensional Chern Insulators, and the Hubbard-type interactions projected into their lowest band take particularly simple forms. By exactly solving the many-body interacting spectrum of these models, we show that, just like in the Fractional Quantum Hall effect, the zero modes of the thin-torus limit are CDW states of occupation numbers satisfying generalized Pauli principles. As opposed to the FQH where the thin-torus CDW appear in orbital space, in the thin-torus FCI states, the CDW states are in real-space. We show the counting of the quasihole excitations in the energy spectrum cannot distinguish between a CDW state and a FQH state. However, by exactly computing the entanglement spectrum for the thin-torus states, we show that it can qualitatively and quantitatively distinguish between a CDW and a fractional topological state such as the FCI. We then discover a previously unknown separation of energy scales of the full FQH energy spectrum in the thin torus limit and find that Chern insulator models exhibiting strong isotropic FCI states have a similar structure in their thin-torus limit spectrum. We close by numerically computing the evolution of energy and entanglement spectra from the thin-torus to the isotropic limit. Our results can also be interpreted as an analysis of one-body, 1-dimensional topological insulators stabilized by inversion symmetry in the presence of interactions.
Chern insulators are band insulators exhibiting a nonzero Hall conductance but preserving the lattice translational symmetry. We conclusively show that a partially filled Chern insulator at 1/3 filling exhibits a fractional quantum Hall effect and rule out charge-density wave states that have not been ruled out by previous studies. By diagonalizing the Hubbard interaction in the flat-band limit of these insulators, we show the following: The system is incompressible and has a 3-fold degenerate ground state whose momenta can be computed by postulating an generalized Pauli principle with no more than 1 particle in 3 consecutive orbitals. The ground state density is constant, and equal to 1/3 in momentum space. Excitations of the system are fractional statistics particles whose total counting matches that of quasiholes in the Laughlin state based on the same generalized Pauli principle. The entanglement spectrum of the state has a clear entanglement gap which seems to remain finite in the thermodynamic limit. The levels below the gap exhibit counting identical to that of Laughlin 1/3 quasiholes. Both the 3 ground states and excited states exhibit spectral flow upon flux insertion. All the properties above disappear in the trivial state of the insulator - both the many-body energy gap and the entanglement gap close at the phase transition when the single-particle Hamiltonian goes from topologically nontrivial to topologically trivial. These facts clearly show that fractional many-body states are possible in topological insulators.
We investigate topological phase transitions in Chern insulators within three-band models, focusing on the empty band and lowest band populated by spinless fermions. We consider Lieb and kagome lattices and notice phase transitions driven by the hopping integral between nearest-neighbors, which leads to the change of the lowest band Chern number from C=1C=1C=1 to C=−1C=-1C=−1. In the single-particle picture, different phases are examined by investigating corresponding entanglement spectra and the evolution of the entanglement entropy. Entanglement spectra reveal the spectral flow characteristic of topologically nontrivial systems before and after phase transitions. For the lowest band with 1/31/31/3 filling, Fractional Chern insulator (FCI) phases are identified by examining the ground state momenta, the spectral flow, and counting of the entanglement energy levels below the gap in the entanglement spectrum. A quasilinear dependence of the entanglement entropy α(nA)α(n_A)α(nA​) term is observed for FCI phase, similarly to linear behavior expected for Laughlin phase in the fractional quantum Hall effect. At the topological phase transition, for both empty and partially filled lowest bands, the energy gap closure and a discontinuity in the entanglement entropy are observed. This coincides with the divergence of a standard deviation of the Berry curvature. We notice also a phase transition driven by the nearest-neighbor interaction in the Lieb lattice, where the many-body energy gap closes. The phase transitions are shown to be stable for an arbitrary system size, thus predicted to be present in the thermodynamic limit. While our calculations are performed for an interaction energy far exceeding the gap between the two lowest energy bands, we note that the higher band does not affect the phase transitions, however destabilizes FCI phases.
We explore the quasi-one-dimensional (thin torus, or TT) limit of fractional Chern insulators (FCIs) as a starting point for their adiabatic preparation in quantum simulators. Our approach is based on tuning the hopping amplitude in one direction as an experimentally amenable knob to dynamically change the effective aspect ratio of the system. Similar to the TT limit of fractional quantum Hall systems in the continuum, we find that the hopping-induced TT limit adiabatically connects the FCI state to a trivial charge density wave (CDW) ground state. This adiabatic path may be harnessed for state preparation schemes relying on the initialization of a CDW state followed by the adiabatic decrease of a hopping anisotropy. Our findings are based on the calculation of the excitation gap in a number of FCI models, both on a lattice and consisting of coupled wires. By analytical calculation of the gap in the limit of strongly anisotropic hopping, we show that its scaling is compatible with the preparation of large-size FCIs for sufficiently large hopping anisotropy, where the amenable system sizes are only limited by the maximal hopping amplitude. Our numerical simulations in the framework of exact diagonalization explore the full anisotropy range to corroborate these results.
Recent theoretical works have demonstrated various robust Abelian and non-Abelian fractional topological phases in lattice models with topological flat bands carrying Chern number C=1C=1C=1. Here we study hard-core bosons and interacting fermions in a three-band triangular-lattice model with the lowest topological flat band of Chern number C=2C=2C=2. We find convincing numerical evidence of bosonic fractional quantum Hall effect at the $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/3$ filling characterized by threefold quasidegeneracy of ground states on a torus, a fractional Chern number for each ground state, a robust spectrum gap, and a gap in quasihole excitation spectrum. We also observe numerical evidence of a robust fermionic fractional quantum Hall effect for spinless fermions at the $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/5$ filling with short-range interactions.
It has been recently realized that strong interactions in topological Bloch bands give rise to the appearance of novel states of matter. Here we study connections between these systems---fractional Chern insulators and the fractional quantum Hall states---via generalization of a gauge-fixed Wannier-Qi construction in the cylinder geometry. Our setup offers a number of important advantages compared to the earlier exact diagonalization studies on a torus. Most notably, it gives access to edge states and to a single-cut orbital entanglement spectrum, hence to the physics of bulk-edge correspondence. It is also readily implemented in the state-of-the-art density matrix renormalization group method that allows for numerical simulations of significantly larger systems. We demonstrate our general approach on examples of flat-band models on ruby and kagome lattices at bosonic filling fractions $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2$ and $\ensuremath{\nu}=1$, which show the signatures of (non)-Abelian phases, and establish the correspondence between the physics of edge states and the entanglement in the bulk. Notably, we find that the non-Abelian $\ensuremath{\nu}=1$ phase can be stabilized by purely on-site interactions in the presence of a confining potential.
The energy and entanglement spectrum of fractionally filled interacting topological insulators exhibit a peculiar manifold of low-energy states separated by a gap from a high-energy set of spurious states. In the current paper, we show that in the case of fractionally filled Chern insulators, the topological information of the many-body state developing in the system resides in this low-energy manifold. We identify an emergent many-body translational symmetry which allows us to separate the states in quasidegenerate center-of-mass momentum sectors. Within one center-of-mass sector, the states can be further classified as eigenstates of an emergent (in the thermodynamic limit) set of many-body relative translation operators. We analytically establish a mapping between the two-dimensional Brillouin zone for the fractional quantum Hall effect on the torus and the one for the fractional Chern insulator. We show that the counting of quasidegenerate levels below the gap for the fractional Chern insulator should arise from a folding of the states in the fractional quantum Hall system at an identical filling factor. We show how to count and separate the excitations of the Laughlin, Moore-Read, and Read-Rezayi series in the fractional quantum Hall effect into two-dimensional Brillouin zone momentum sectors and then how to map these into the momentum sectors of the fractional Chern insulator. We numerically check our results by showing the emergent symmetry at work for Laughlin, Moore-Read, and Read-Rezayi states on the checkerboard model of a Chern insulator, thereby also showing, as a proof of principle, that non-Abelian fractional Chern insulators exist.