Topological phase transitions between chiral and helical spin textures in a lattice with spin-orbit coupling and a magnetic field

Abstract

We consider the combined effects of large spin-orbit couplings and a perpendicular magnetic field in a 2D honeycomb fermionic lattice. This system provides an elegant setup to generate versatile spin textures propagating along the edge of a sample. The spin-orbit coupling is shown to induce topological phase transitions between a helical quantum spin Hall phase and a chiral spin-imbalanced quantum Hall state. Besides, we find that the spin orientation of a single topological edge state can be tuned by a Rashba spin-orbit coupling, opening an interesting route towards quantum spin manipulation. We discuss the possible realization of our results using cold atoms trapped in optical lattices, where large synthetic magnetic fields and spin-orbit couplings can be engineered and finely tuned. In particular, this system would lead to the observation of a time-reversal-symmetry-broken quantum spin Hall phase.

8 pages, 3 figures, Accepted in Europhys. Lett. (Dec 2011)

References in corpus (15)

• Many-Body Physics with Ultracold Gases
• Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells
• A spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate
• Artificial gauge potentials for neutral atoms
• Synthetic magnetic fields for ultracold neutral atoms
• Quantum Hall Effect from the Topological Surface States of Strained Bulk HgTe
• Realistic Time-Reversal Invariant Topological Insulators With Neutral Atoms
• Engineering Time-Reversal Invariant Topological Insulators With Ultra-Cold Atoms
• Time-reversal-symmetry-broken quantum spin Hall effect
• Single valley Dirac fermions in zero-gap HgTe quantum wells
• Chiral Rashba spin textures in ultra-cold Fermi gases
• Giant Spin-Hall Effect induced by Zeeman Interaction in Graphene
• Simulating Dirac fermions with Abelian and non-Abelian gauge fields in optical lattices
• Spin-charge-density wave in a squircle-like Fermi surface for ultracold atoms
• Synthetic magnetic fluxes on the honeycomb lattice

Cited by in corpus (37)

• Light-induced gauge fields for ultracold atoms
• Exotic quantum spin models in spin-orbit-coupled Mott insulators
• Spin-orbit coupling and spin Hall effect for neutral atoms without spin-flips
• Topological phase transitions driven by next-nearest-neighbor hopping in two-dimensional lattices
• Helical edge states and topological phase transitions in phononic systems using bi-layered lattices
• Simulating Z_2 topological insulators with cold atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice
• Spin-helical transport in normal and superconducting topological insulators
• Topological phases in a two-dimensional lattice: Magnetic field versus spin-orbit coupling
• Quantum simulation of correlated-hopping models with fermions in optical lattices
• Effects of Smooth Boundaries on Topological Edge Modes in Optical Lattices
• Measuring topology in a laser-coupled honeycomb lattice: From Chern insulators to topological semi-metals
• Double Weyl points and Fermi arcs of topological semimetals in non-Abelian gauge potentials
• Graphene-based heterojunction between two topological insulators
• Reentrant topological phases in Mn-doped HgTe quantum wells
• Realising Haldane's vision for a Chern insulator in buckled lattices
• Multiband s-wave topological superconductors: role of dimensionality and magnetic field response
• Flow enhanced pairing and other novel effects in Fermi gases in synthetic gauge fields
• Nontrivial topological states on a Möbius band
• Identifying topological edge states in 2D optical lattices using light scattering
• Topological phase transitions driven by non-Abelian gauge potentials in optical square lattices
• Topological insulating phases from two-dimensional nodal loop semimetals
• Dynamical competition between Quantum Hall and Quantum Spin Hall effects
• Topological Floquet states on a Möbius band irradiated by circularly polarised light
• Quantum phase transitions of topological insulators without gap closing
• From antiferromagnetic order to magnetic textures in the two dimensional Fermi Hubbard model with synthetic spin orbit interaction
• Chern band insulators in magnetic field
• $SU(3)$ Topological Insulators in the Honeycomb Lattice
• Spin-lattice and electron-phonon coupling in 3$d$/5$d$ hybrid Sr${}_3$NiIrO${}_6$
• Rigidity of topological invariants to symmetry breakings
• Edge states in proximitized graphene ribbons and flakes in a perpendicular magnetic field: emergence of lone pseudohelical pairs and pure spin-current states
• Topological multiferroic phases in the extended Kane-Mele-Hubbard Model in the Hofstadter regime
• Topological phase transitions in an inverted InAs/GaSb quantum well driven by tilted magnetic fields
• Pairing properties of cold fermions in the honeycomb lattice
• Feshbach Resonance in a Synthetic Non-Abelian Gauge Field
• Synthesizing the Quantum Spin Hall Phase for Ultracold Atoms in Bichromatic Chiral Optical Ladders
• Competing topological phases in few-layer graphene
• Particle-hole symmetry broken solutions in graphene nanoribbons: a multi-orbital, mean-field perspective