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arXiv:2606.26256

The Colored Hofstadter Butterfly as a Many-Body Quantum Hall Phase Diagram

Giovanna Marcelli, Tadahiro Miyao, Domenico Monaco, Stefan Teufel, Marius Wesle

math-phquant-phSubmitted Jun 24, 2026• Announced Jun 26, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We prove that the colored Hofstadter butterfly has a many-body interpretation for a broad class of weakly interacting lattice fermion systems. Starting from a spectral gap of a Hofstadter-like one-particle Hamiltonian at arbitrary magnetic flux $b$, we construct an open region in the three-dimensional parameter space $(b,μ,λ)$ of magnetic field, chemical potential, and interaction strength on which the infinite-volume interacting system has locally unique gapped ground states. The construction combines quasi-adiabatic continuation in the interaction strength with denominator-independent magnetic perturbation estimates, and therefore covers both commensurate and incommensurate fluxes, where no finite magnetic unit cell exists. On connected uniformly gapped regions meeting the non-interacting plane $λ=0$, we prove a many-body gap-labeling theorem: the Hall conductivity appearing in the macroscopic Ohm's law is constant and quantized, satisfying $2πσ^{\mathrm{H}}\in\mathbb{Z}$. Thus the integer colors of the non-interacting Hofstadter butterfly persist as Hall-conductivity labels of interacting quantum Hall phases.

Comments
38pages, 1 figure

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We prove that the colored Hofstadter butterfly has a many-body interpretation for a broad class of weakly interacting lattice fermion systems. Starting from a spectral gap of a Hofstadter-like one-particle Hamiltonian at arbitrary magnetic flux bbb, we construct an open region in the three-dimensional parameter space (b,μ,λ)(b,μ,λ)(b,μ,λ) of magnetic field, chemical potential, and interaction strength on which the infinite-volume interacting system has locally unique gapped ground states. The construction combines quasi-adiabatic continuation in the interaction strength with denominator-independent magnetic perturbation estimates, and therefore covers both commensurate and incommensurate fluxes, where no finite magnetic unit cell exists. On connected uniformly gapped regions meeting the non-interacting plane λ=0λ=0λ=0, we prove a many-body gap-labeling theorem: the Hall conductivity appearing in the macroscopic Ohm's law is constant and quantized, satisfying 2πσH∈Z2πσ^{\mathrm{H}}\in\mathbb{Z}2πσH∈Z. Thus the integer colors of the non-interacting Hofstadter butterfly persist as Hall-conductivity labels of interacting quantum Hall phases.
We study the ground-state phase diagram of the strongly interacting Harper–Hofstadter–Mott model at quarter flux on a quasi-one-dimensional lattice consisting of a single magnetic flux quantum in y -direction. In addition to superfluid phases with various density patterns, the ground-state phase diagram features quasi-one-dimensional analogs of fractional quantum Hall phases at fillings ν = 1/2 and 3/2, where the latter is only found thanks to the hopping anisotropy and the quasi-one-dimensional geometry. At integer fillings—where in the full two-dimensional system the ground-state is expected to be gapless—we observe gapped non-degenerate ground-states: at ν = 1 it shows an odd 'fermionic' Hall conductance, while the Hall response at ν = 2 consists of the transverse transport of a single particle–hole pair, resulting in a net zero Hall conductance. The results are obtained by exact diagonalization and in the reciprocal mean-field approximation.
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For T - L x L a finite subset of Z{sup 2}, let H{sub o} denote a Hamiltonian on T with periodic boundary conditions and finite range, finite strength intetactions and a unique ground state with a nonvanishing spectral gap. For S {element_of} T, let q{sub s} denote the charge at site s and assume that the total charge Q = {Sigma}{sub s {element_of} T} q{sub s} is conserved. Using the local charge operators q{sub s}, we introduce a boundary magnetic flux in the horizontal and vertical direction and allow the ground state to evolve quasiadiabatically around a square of size one magnetic flux, in flux space. At the end of the evolution we obtain a trivial Berry phase, which we compare, via a method reminiscent of Stokes Theorem. to the Berry phase obtained from an evolution around an exponentially small loop near the origin. As a result, we show, without any averaging assumption, that the Hall conductance is quantized in integer multiples of e{sup 2}/h up to exponentially small corrections of order e{sup -L/{zeta}}, where {zeta}, is a correlation length that depends only on the gap and the range and strength of the interactions.