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Physical review. B./Physical review. B

From edge-state physics to entanglement spectrum: Interactions and impurities in two-dimensional topological insulators

Marcela Derli, E. Novais

Published Jan 4, 2024• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a theoretical approach to incorporate electronic interactions in the study of two-dimensional topological insulators. By exploiting the correspondence between edge-state physics and entanglement spectrum in gapped topological systems, we deconstruct the system into one-dimensional channels. This framework enables a simple and elegant inclusion of fermionic interactions into the discussion of topological insulators. We apply this approach to the Kane-Mele model with interactions and magnetic impurities.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.109.l041101

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We present a theoretical approach to incorporate electronic interactions in the study of two-dimensional topological insulators. By exploiting the correspondence between edge-state physics and entanglement spectrum in gapped topological systems, we deconstruct the system into one-dimensional channels. This framework enables a simple and elegant inclusion of fermionic interactions into the discussion of topological insulators. We apply this approach to the Kane-Mele model with interactions and magnetic impurities.
We present a novel theoretical approach to incorporate electronic interactions in the study of two-dimensional topological insulators. By exploiting the correspondence between edge state physics and entanglement spectrum in gapped topological systems, we deconstruct the system into one-dimensional channels. This framework enables a simple and elegant inclusion of fermionic interactions into the discussion of topological insulators. We apply this approach to the Kane-Mele model with interactions and magnetic impurities.
We study the problem of a backcattering impurity coupled to the edge states of a two-dimensional topological insulator. In the regime where the backscattering potential is larger than the band gap and accounting for electron-electron interactions, it is s hown that the system can be described as a resonant level coupled to the one-dimensional (1D) channel of interacting edge electrons. We discuss the relationship of this system to the model of a (structureless) impurity in a 1D interacting electron liquid. Differently from the latter, transmission is suppressed for both repulsive and weak to moderate attractive interactions in the resonant regime.
Topological insulators are materials that behave as insulators in the bulk, but present conducting edge states.Despite the growing interest in such materials due to their possible applications on spintronic devices and quantum computing, several open questions still remain regarding the roles of both electronic interactions and dimensionality in these systems.The goal of this work is to tackle some of these questions.To do so, we study a quasi-1D system presenting a topologically non-trivial phase and electronic interactions: the so-called Kane-Mele-Hubbard ladders.Here, we apply the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithm in the tensor network formalism in order to calculate some physical properties of this system.The DMRG calculations allow us to reach the system's ground state and enable the efficient computation of observables and of the entanglement entropy.The Kane-Mele-Hubbard model is an interacting version of the Kane-Mele model, which displays topologically non-trivial phases.The interest on this system is due to the combination of effects caused by the spin-orbit coupling and the electronic interactions.For the non-interacting case we have a topological insulator, whereas in the highly interacting picture we have a Mott insulator with localized electrons.We explore the phase transition between these regimes, looking at the conditions needed for the appearance of spin-polarized edge states.We also propose the entanglement entropy between two halves of the system as an indicator of the topological phase transition, as it presents a particular pattern when the phase transition takes place.
Higher-order topological crystalline phases in low-dimensional interacting quantum systems represent a challenging and largely unexplored research topic. Here, we derive a Hamiltonian describing fermions interacting through correlated hopping processes that break chiral invariance, but preserve both inversion and time-reversal symmetries. In this way, we show that our one-dimensional model gives rise to an interacting second-order topological insulating phase that supports gapped edge states. The topological nature of such an interacting phase turns out to be revealed by both long-range order of a nonlocal string correlation function and by even degeneracy of the entanglement spectrum. For strong interactions we instead find that the topological crystalline phase is destroyed and replaced by a singlet superconducting phase. The latter, characterized by local fermionic pairing, turns out to appear both in a homogeneous and in a phase separated form. Relevantly, the derived one-dimensional model and the second-order topological insulator can be explored and investigated in atomic quantum simulators.
We study the boundary criticality in 2D interacting topological insulators. Using the determinant quantum Monte Carlo method, we present a nonperturbative study of the boundary quantum phase diagram in the Kane-Mele-Hubbard-Rashba model. Our results reveal rich boundary critical phenomena at the quantum phase transition between a topological insulator and an antiferromagnetic insulator, encompassing ordinary, special, and extraordinary transitions. Combining analytical derivation of the boundary theory with unbiased numerically exact quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we demonstrate that the presence of topological edge states enriches the ordinary transition that renders a continuous boundary scaling dimension and, more intriguingly, leads to a special transition of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless type. Our work establishes a framework for the nonperturbative study of boundary criticality in two-dimensional topological systems with strong electron correlations.
We study two a priori unrelated constructions: the spectrum of edge modes in a band topological insulator or superconductor with a physical edge, and the ground state entanglement spectrum in an extended system where an edge is simulated by an entanglement bipartition. We prove an exact relation between the ground state entanglement spectrum of such a system and the spectrum edge modes of the corresponding spectrally flattened Hamiltonian. In particular, we show that gapless edge modes result in degeneracies of the entanglement spectrum.