Hofstadter's Butterfly in the strongly interacting regime

Bin Y, Nikolai Sinitsyn

D. C. Alyuruk, M. Iskin

We analyze the two-body spectrum within the Hofstadter-Hubbard model on a square lattice through an exact variational ansatz and study the topological properties of its low-lying two-body bound-state branches. In particular, we discuss how the Hofstadter-Hubbard butterfly of the two-body branches evolves as a function of onsite interactions and how to efficiently calculate their Chern numbers using the Fukui-Hatsugai-Suzuki approach. Our numerical results are fully consistent with the simple picture that appears in the strong-coupling limit, where the attraction between fermions forms a composite boson characterized by an effective hopping parameter and an effective magnetic-flux ratio.

M. Iskin

Despite the multi-band spectrum of the widely-known Hofstadter butterfly, it turns out that the pairing correlations of the time-reversal-symmetric Hofstadter-Hubbard model are well-described by a single order parameter that is uniform in real space. By exploiting a BCS mean-field theory for the nearly-flat butterfly-bands regime of low magnetic-flux limit, here we reveal a number of unusual superfluid properties both in the ground state and at finite temperatures. Our thorough analysis includes but is not limited to the order parameter, condensate and superfluid fractions, and the critical BCS and BKT transition temperatures.

Dietrich E. Wolf, J. Zittartz

Zhoushen Huang, Daniel P. Arovas

M. Iskin

Despite the multiband spectrum of the widely known Hofstadter butterfly, it turns out that the pairing correlations of the time-reversal-symmetric Hofstadter-Hubbard model are well described by a single order parameter that is uniform in real space. By exploiting a BCS mean-field theory for the nearly flat butterfly-bands regime of low magnetic-flux limit, here we reveal a number of unusual superfluid properties both in the ground state and at finite temperatures. Our thorough analysis includes but is not limited to the order parameter, condensate, and superfluid fractions, and the critical BCS and Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition temperatures.