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arXiv:2511.17173 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Probing boundary spins in the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger-Hubbard model

Armando A. Aligia, Alejandro M. Lobos, Lucila Peralta Gavensky, Claudio J. Gazza

Published Dec 3, 2025• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Studying boundary excitations provides a powerful approach to probe correlations in topological phases. We propose that localized spins near the ends of a Su--Schrieffer--Heeger--Hubbard chain embedded in an insulating environment can be detected experimentally using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) combined with electron-spin resonance. When the STM tip is in the contact regime, the tip--end-spin coupling realizes an effective Anderson impurity problem, giving rise to a Kondo peak at low bias. Spatially resolving the Kondo resonance width as the STM tip approaches the chain ends provides an indirect yet clear signature of these localized spins. To support this proposal, we use density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) to calculate the spin gap and spin projection of end states for chains of various lengths and interaction strengths $U$ at half filling. In the noninteracting limit ($U=0$), we derive simple analytical expressions that reproduce the numerical results for sufficiently long chains. We also discuss how the correlated phase of the isolated chain is characterized by boundary zeros in its single-particle Green's function, and briefly comment on their localization properties in relation to the boundary spins.

DOI
10.1103/vhfn-6f3d

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Studying boundary excitations provides a powerful approach to probe correlations in topological phases. We propose that localized spins near the ends of a Su--Schrieffer--Heeger--Hubbard chain embedded in an insulating environment can be detected experimentally using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) combined with electron-spin resonance. When the STM tip is in the contact regime, the tip--end-spin coupling realizes an effective Anderson impurity problem, giving rise to a Kondo peak at low bias. Spatially resolving the Kondo resonance width as the STM tip approaches the chain ends provides an indirect yet clear signature of these localized spins. To support this proposal, we use density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) to calculate the spin gap and spin projection of end states for chains of various lengths and interaction strengths UUU at half filling. In the noninteracting limit (U=0U=0U=0), we derive simple analytical expressions that reproduce the numerical results for sufficiently long chains. We also discuss how the correlated phase of the isolated chain is characterized by boundary zeros in its single-particle Green's function, and briefly comment on their localization properties in relation to the boundary spins.
We study the effects of electron-electron interactions on the charge excitation spectrum of the spinful Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model, a prototype of a one-dimensional bulk obstructed topological insulator. In view of recent progress in the fabrication of dopant-based quantum simulators we focus on experimentally detectable signatures of interacting topology in finite lattices. To this end we use Lanczos-based exact diagonalization to calculate the single-particle spectral function in real space which generalizes the local density of states to interacting systems. Its spatial and spectral resolution allows for the direct investigation and identification of edge states. By studying the noninteracting limit, we demonstrate that the topological in-gap states on the boundary are robust against both finite-size effects as well as random bond and onsite disorder which suggests the feasibility of simulating the SSH model in engineered dopant arrays in silicon. While edge excitations become zero-energy spinlike for any finite interaction strength, our analysis of the spectral function shows that the single-particle charge excitations are gapped out on the boundary. Despite the loss of topological protection, we find that these edge excitations are quasiparticlelike as long as they remain within the bulk gap. Above a critical interaction strength of ${U}_{c}\ensuremath{\approx}5t$ these quasiparticles on the boundary lose their coherence which is explained by the merging of edge and bulk states. This is in contrast to the many-body edge excitations which survive the limit of strong coupling, as established in the literature. Our findings show that for moderate repulsive interactions the nontrivial phase of the interacting SSH model can be detected through remnant signatures of topological single-particle states using single-particle local measurement techniques such as scanning tunneling spectroscopy.
Topological Kondo insulators are strongly correlated materials where itinerant electrons hybridize with localized spins, giving rise to a topologically nontrivial band structure. Here, we use nonperturbative bosonization and renormalization-group techniques to study theoretically a one-dimensional topological Kondo insulator, described as a Kondo-Heisenberg model, where the Heisenberg spin-1/2 chain is coupled to a Hubbard chain through a Kondo exchange interaction in the p-wave channel (i.e., a strongly correlated version of the prototypical Tamm-Schockley model). We derive and solve renormalization-group equations at two-loop order in the Kondo parameter, and find that, at half filling, the charge degrees of freedom in the Hubbard chain acquire a Mott gap, even in the case of a noninteracting conduction band (Hubbard parameter U=0). Furthermore, at low enough temperatures, the system maps onto a spin-1/2 ladder with local ferromagnetic interactions along the rungs, effectively locking the spin degrees of freedom into a spin-1 chain with frozen charge degrees of freedom. This structure behaves as a spin-1 Haldane chain, a prototypical interacting topological spin model, and features two magnetic spin-1/2 end states for chains with open boundary conditions. Our analysis allows us to derive an insightful connection between topological Kondo insulators in one spatial dimension and the well-known physics of the Haldane chain, showing that the ground state of the former is qualitatively different from the predictions of the naive mean-field theory.
An Anderson impurity in a Hubbard model on chains with finite length is studied using the density-matrix renormalization-group (DMRG) technique. In the first place, we analyzed how the reduction of electron density from half filling to quarter filling affects the Kondo resonance in the limit of Hubbard repulsion U=0U=0U=0. In general, a weak dependence with the electron density was found for the local density of states (LDOS), at the impurity except when the impurity, at half filling, is close to a mixed-valence regime. Next, in the central part of this paper, we studied the effects of finite Hubbard interaction on the chain at quarter filling. Our main result is that this interaction drives the impurity into a more defined Kondo regime although accompanied in most cases by a reduction of the spectral weight of the impurity LDOS. Again, for the impurity in the mixed-valence regime, we observed an interesting nonmonotonic behavior. We also concluded that the conductance, computed for a small finite bias applied to the leads, follows the behavior of the impurity LDOS, as in the case of noninteracting chains. Finally, we analyzed how the Hubbard interaction and the finite chain length affect the spin compensation cloud both at zero and at finite temperature, in this case using quantum Monte Carlo techniques.
Abstract Motivated by recent advances in fabricating artificial lattices in semiconductors and their promise for quantum simulation of topological materials, we study the one-dimensional dimerized Fermi–Hubbard model. We show how the topological phases at half-filling can be characterized by a reduced Zak phase defined based on the reduced density matrix of each spin subsystem. Signatures of bulk–boundary correspondence are observed in the triplon excitation of the bulk and the edge states of uncoupled spins at the boundaries. At quarter-filling, we show that owing to the presence of the Hubbard interaction the system can undergo a transition to the topological ground state of the non-interacting Su–Schrieffer–Heeger model with the application of a moderate-strength external magnetic field. We propose a robust experimental realization with a chain of dopant atoms in silicon or gate-defined quantum dots in GaAs where the transition can be probed by measuring the tunneling current through the many-body state of the chain.
The effect of Hubbard and Kondo interactions on the edge states in the half-filled Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chain of electrons is investigated by studying the behavior of charge quasiparticles using Kumar representation and the density matrix renormalization group method. For any finite dimerization of hopping, by increasing the Hubbard interaction, the edge states are found to transmigrate from the physical charge gap to a high energy gap through an intermediate phase without the edge states. The extent of this phase with no edge states shrinks smoothly upon increasing the dimerization. The transmigration of edge states from the charge gap to the high energy gap is also found to occur with Kondo interaction, but through an intermediate phase which itself changes from having no edge states for weak dimerization to having the edge states in the physical as well as the high energy gaps coexisting from moderate to strong dimerization.
We investigate the effective interaction between two localized spin impurities embedded in a frustrated spin-1/2 J1 ⁣− ⁣J2J_1\!-\!J_2J1​−J2​ Heisenberg chain. Treating the impurity spins as classical moments coupled locally to the host, we combine second--order perturbation theory with large--scale density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations to determine the impurity--impurity interaction as a function of separation, coupling strength, and magnetic frustration. In the weak--coupling regime, we show that the interaction is governed by the the static spin susceptibility of the host and exhibits oscillatory power--law decay in the gapless phase, modified by universal logarithmic corrections at the SU(2)--symmetric critical point. In the gapped dimerized phase, the interaction decays exponentially with distance. For intermediate and strong impurity--host coupling, we observe a crossover to a boundary--dominated regime characterized by pronounced parity effects associated with the length of the chain segment between impurities, signaling a breakdown of the simple RKKY--like description. Our results establish impurity--impurity interactions as a sensitive probe of frustrated quantum spin liquids and provide a controlled framework for distinguishing gapless and gapped phases through local perturbations.