arXiv:2205.14909 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B
Phase transitions in the Haldane-Hubbard model with ionic potentials
Hao Yuan, Yangbin Guo, Ruifeng Lu, Hantao Lu, Can Shao
Abstract
By employing the exact-diagonalization method, we revisit the ground-state phase diagram of the Haldane-Hubbard model on the honeycomb lattice with staggered sublattice potentials. The phase diagram includes the band insulator, Mott insulator, and two Chern insulator phases with Chern numbers $C=2$ and $C=1$, respectively. The character of transitions between different phases is studied by analyzing the lower-lying energy levels, excitation gaps, structure factors, and fidelity metric. We find that the $C=1$ phase can be continuously deformed into the $C=2$ phase without a gap closure in the periodic boundary condition, while a further analysis on the Berry curvatures indicates that the excitation gap closes at the phase boundary in a twisted boundary condition, accompanied by the discontinuities of structure factors. All the other phase transitions are found to be first-order ones as expected.