We perform an exact-diagonalization study of quasihole excitations for the two-component Halperin (221) state in the lowest Landau level and for several $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/3$ bosonic fractional Chern insulators in topological flat bands with Chern number
∣C∣=2. Properties including the quasihole size, charge, and braiding statistics are evaluated. For the Halperin (221) model state, we observe isotropic quasiholes with a clear internal structure, and obtain the quasihole charge and statistics matching the theoretical values. Interestingly, we also extract the same quasihole size, charge, and braiding statistics for the continuum model states of
∣C∣=2 fractional Chern insulators, although the latter possess a ``color-entangled'' nature that does not exist in ordinary two-component Halperin states. We also consider two real lattice models with a band having
∣C∣=2. There we find that a quasihole can exhibit much stronger oscillations of the density profile, while having the same charge and statistics as those in the continuum models.
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.