Interaction-driven topological insulator states in strained graphene
arXiv:1112.6420 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.066802
Abstract
The electronic properties of graphene can be manipulated via mechanical deformations, which opens prospects for studying the Dirac fermions in new regimes and for new device applications. Certain natural configurations of strain generate large nearly uniform pseudo-magnetic fields, which have opposite signs in the two valleys, and give rise to flat spin- and valley-degenerate pseudo Landau levels (PLLs). Here we consider the effect of the Coulomb interactions in strained graphene with uniform pseudo-magnetic field. We show that the spin/valley degeneracies of the PLLs get lifted by the interactions, giving rise to topological insulator-like states. In particular, when a nonzero PLL is quarter- or three-quarter filled, an anomalous quantum Hall state spontaneously breaking time-reversal symmetry emerges. At half-filled PLL, weak spin-orbital interaction stabilizes time-reversal-symmetric quantum spin-Hall state. These many-body states are characterized by the quantized conductance and persist to a high temperature scale set by the Coulomb interactions, which we estimate to be a few hundreds Kelvin at moderate strain values. At fractional fillings, fractional quantum Hall states breaking valley symmetry emerge. These results suggest a new route to realizing robust topological insulator states in mesoscopic graphene.
5 pages
References in corpus (19)
- The electronic properties of graphene
- Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
- Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells
- Ripple Texturing of Suspended Graphene Atomic Membranes
- High temperature fractional quantum Hall states
- Fractional quantum Hall states at zero magnetic field
- Intrinsic and Rashba Spin-orbit Interactions in Graphene Sheets
- All-graphene integrated circuits via strain engineering
- Nearly-flat bands with nontrivial topology
- Strong suppression of weak (anti)localization in graphene
- Quantum Hall Ferromagnetism in Graphene
- Intervalley scattering, long-range disorder, and effective time reversal symmetry breaking in graphene
- Graphene as an electronic membrane
- Electron interactions in graphene in a strong magnetic field
- Fractional topological liquids with time-reversal symmetry and their lattice realization
- Excitonic gap, phase transition, and quantum Hall effect in graphene
- Strain-induced pseudo-magnetic fields and charging effects on CVD-grown graphene
- Pseudo-magnetic catalysis of the time-reversal symmetry breaking in graphene
- Anomalous structure in the single particle spectrum of the fractional quantum Hall effect
Cited by in corpus (37)
- Novel effects of strains in graphene and other two dimensional materials
- Electronic Structure, Surface Doping, and Optical Response in Epitaxial WSe2 Thin Films
- Quantum interference and Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in topological insulators
- Valley Polarization and Inversion in Strained Graphene via Pseudo-Landau Levels, Valley Splitting of Real Landau Levels and Confined States
- Recent progresses of quantum confinement in graphene quantum dots
- Observation of Valley-polarized Landau Levels in Strained Graphene
- Superconducting States in pseudo-Landau Levels of Strained Graphene
- Pseudomagnetic fields in graphene nanobubbles of constrained geometry: A molecular dynamics study
- Strain-induced time-reversal odd superconductivity in graphene
- Theory of unconventional quantum Hall effect in strained graphene
- Resonant tunneling in graphene pseudomagnetic quantum dots
- Strain-enhanced tunneling magnetoresistance in MgO magnetic tunnel junctions
- Competing Chiral Orders in the Topological Haldane-Hubbard Model of Spin-1/2 Fermions and Bosons
- Quantized transport, strain-induced perfectly conducting modes and valley filtering on shape-optimized graphene Corbino devices
- Topological insulators in strained graphene at weak interaction
- Strain-induced Landau Levels in arbitrary dimensions with an exact spectrum
- Interacting Dirac fermions under spatially alternating pseudo-magnetic field: Realization of spontaneous quantum Hall effect
- Strain tuned topology in the Haldane and the modified Haldane models
- Valley polarized magnetic state in hole-doped mono layers of transition metal dichalcogenides
- Landau Levels in Strained Optical Lattices
- Topological phase transitions and universality in the Haldane-Hubbard model
- Stability of edge states in strained graphene
- Stretching graphene using polymeric micro-muscles
- Competing charge-density-wave, magnetic and topological ground states at and near Dirac points in graphene in axial magnetic fields
- Engineering the Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in Graphene with Uniaxial Strains
- Superconducting states and Majorana modes in transition-metal dichalcogenides under inhomogeneous strain
- Measuring the topological phase transition via the single-particle density matrix
- Sound waves induce Volkov-like states, band structure and collimation effect in graphene
- Local Chern marker of smoothly confined Hofstadter fermions
- Extrinsic n-type semiconductor transition in ZrSe2 with the metallic character through hafnium substitution
- Fractional Josephson effect in nonuniformly strained graphene
- Effective theory of fractional topological insulators in two spatial dimensions
- Valley-dependent gauge fields for ultracold atoms in square optical superlattices
- Fermionic symmetry-protected topological state in strained graphene
- Fractional quantum Hall states of dipolar fermions in a strained optical lattice
- Electronic transport in a two-dimensional superlattice engineered via self-assembled nanostructures
- Electron-Doping Induced Semiconductor to Metal Transitions in ZrSe2 Layers via Copper Atomic Intercalation