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arXiv:1402.2652 · Physical Review B

Z 2 fractional topological insulators in two dimensions

Cécile Repellin, Bogdan Andrei Bernevig, Nicolas Regnault

Published Dec 1, 2014• 46 citations
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Abstract

We propose a simple microscopic model to numerically investigate the stability of a two-dimensional fractional topological insulator (FTI). The simplest example of an FTI consists of two decoupled copies of a Laughlin state with opposite chiralities, or double-semion phase. We focus on bosons at half filling. We study the stability of the FTI phase upon addition of two coupling terms of different nature: an interspin interaction term, and an inversion-symmetry-breaking term that couples the copies at the single-particle level. Using exact-diagonalization and entanglement spectra, we numerically show that the FTI phase is stable against both perturbations. We compare our system to a similar bilayer fractional Chern insulator. We show evidence that the time-reversal-invariant system survives the introduction of interaction coupling on a larger scale than the time-reversal-symmetry-breaking one, stressing the importance of time-reversal symmetry in the FTI phase stability. We also discuss possible fractional phases beyond $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2$.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.90.245401

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We propose a simple microscopic model to numerically investigate the stability of a two-dimensional fractional topological insulator (FTI). The simplest example of an FTI consists of two decoupled copies of a Laughlin state with opposite chiralities, or double-semion phase. We focus on bosons at half filling. We study the stability of the FTI phase upon addition of two coupling terms of different nature: an interspin interaction term, and an inversion-symmetry-breaking term that couples the copies at the single-particle level. Using exact-diagonalization and entanglement spectra, we numerically show that the FTI phase is stable against both perturbations. We compare our system to a similar bilayer fractional Chern insulator. We show evidence that the time-reversal-invariant system survives the introduction of interaction coupling on a larger scale than the time-reversal-symmetry-breaking one, stressing the importance of time-reversal symmetry in the FTI phase stability. We also discuss possible fractional phases beyond \ensuremathν=1/2\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2\ensuremathν=1/2.
We propose a simple microscopic model to numerically investigate the stability of a two dimensional fractional topological insulator (FTI). The simplest example of a FTI consists of two decoupled copies of a Laughlin state with opposite chiralities. We focus on bosons at half filling. We study the stability of the FTI phase upon addition of two coupling terms of different nature: an interspin interaction term, and an inversion symmetry breaking term that couples the copies at the single particle level. Using exact diagonalization and entanglement spectra, we numerically show that the FTI phase is stable against both perturbations. We compare our system to a similar bilayer fractional Chern insulator. We show evidence that the time reversal invariant system survives the introduction of interaction coupling on a larger scale than the time reversal symmetry breaking one, stressing the importance of time reversal symmetry in the FTI phase stability.
We study two species of (or spin-1/2) fermions with short-range intraspecies repulsion in the presence of opposite (effective) magnetic field, each at Landau level filling factor 1/3. In the absence of interspecies interaction, the ground state is simply two copies of the 1/3 Laughlin state, with opposite chirality, representing the fractional topological insulator (FTI) phase. We show this phase is stable against moderate interspecies interactions. However, strong enough interspecies repulsion leads to phase separation, while strong enough interspecies attraction drives the system into a superfluid phase. We obtain the phase diagram through exact diagonalization calculations. The FTI-superfluid phase transition is shown to be in the (2 +++ 1)-dimensional XY universality class, using an appropriate Chern-Simons-Ginsburg-Landau effective field theory.
Fractional topological insulators (FTIs) are electronic topological phases in (3+1)(3+1)(3+1) dimensions enriched by time reversal (TR) and charge U(1)U(1)U(1) conservation symmetries. We focus on the simplest series of fermionic FTIs, whose bulk quasiparticles consist of deconfined partons that carry fractional electric charges in integral units of e∗=e/(2n+1){e}^{*}=e/(2n+1)e∗=e/(2n+1) and couple to a discrete Z2n+1{\mathbb{Z}}_{2n+1}Z2n+1​ gauge theory. We propose massive symmetry preserving or breaking FTI surface states. Combining the long-ranged entangled bulk with these topological surface states, we deduce the novel topological order of quasi-(2+1)(2+1)(2+1)-dimensional FTI slabs as well as their corresponding edge conformal field theories.
In this paper we construct fully symmetric wave functions for the spin-polarized fractional Chern insulators (FCIs) and time-reversal-invariant fractional topological insulators (FTIs) in two dimensions using the parton approach. We show that the lattice symmetry gives rise to many different FCI and FTI phases even with the same filling fraction $\ensuremath{\nu}$ (and the same quantized Hall conductance ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{xy}$ in the FCI case). They have different symmetry-protected topological orders, which are characterized by different projective symmetry groups. We mainly focus on FCI phases which are realized in a partially filled band with Chern number 1. The low-energy gauge groups of a generic ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{xy}=1/m\ifmmode\cdot\else\textperiodcentered\fi{}{e}^{2}/h$ FCI wave function can be either SU(m)\text{SU}(m)SU(m) or the discrete group Zm{Z}_{m}Zm​, and in the latter case the associated low-energy physics are described by Chern-Simons-Higgs theories. We use our construction to compute the ground-state degeneracy. Examples of FCI/FTI wave functions on honeycomb lattice and checkerboard lattice are explicitly given. Possible non-Abelian FCI phases which may be realized in a partially filled band with Chern number 2 are discussed. Generic FTI wave functions in the absence of spin conservation are also presented whose low-energy gauge groups can be either $\text{SU}(m)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\text{SU}(m)$ or ${Z}_{m}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{Z}_{m}$. The constructed wave functions also set up the framework for future variational Monte Carlo simulations.
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.
Twisted bilayer materials provide a versatile platform for realizing correlated topological states. Motivated by the recent experimental realization of atomic Bose-Einstein condensates in twisted bilayer optical lattices, we investigate the emergence of fractional topological phases in such systems. For experimentally realistic parameters, the single-particle spectrum hosts a pair of quasi-degenerate nearly flat moiré bands. We show using self-consistent Hartree-Fock calculations that atomic interactions spontaneously break time-reversal symmetry, lift the quasi-degeneracy, and generate an isolated nearly flat band with a nonzero Chern number. At fractional filling, exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian projected to this band reveals a threefold degenerate ground-state manifold and a characteristic particle entanglement spectrum, providing strong evidence for a fractional Chern insulator. The resulting many-body gap is of order 10−3ER10^{-3}E_R10−3ER​, corresponding to a nanokelvin energy scale accessible to state-of-the-art cold-atom experiments. Our scheme requires neither spin-orbit coupling, as in transition metal dichalcogenides, nor a finite magnetic field, as in existing twisted-bilayer-graphene experiments, providing a highly tunable route to strongly correlated topological phases in twisted bilayer optical lattices.