Engineering interaction-induced topological insulators in a $\sqrt{3}\times \sqrt{3}$ substrate-induced honeycomb superlattice

Abstract

We consider a system of spinless fermions on the honeycomb lattice with substrate-induced modulated electrostatic potentials tripling the unit cell. The resulting non-Abelian SU(2) gauge fields act cooperatively to realize a quadratic band crossing point (QBCP). Using a combination of mean-field theory and renormalization group techniques, we show that in the QBCP regime, arbitrarily weak repulsive electronic interactions drive the system into the quantum anomalous Hall state. This proves that substrate-induced local voltages are an effective knob to induce the spontaneous formation of a topological quantum phase.

5 pages, 2 figures

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Cited by in corpus (15)

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• Interplay of local order and topology in the extended Haldane-Hubbard model
• The fate of interaction-driven topological insulators under disorder
• Quantum Anomalous Hall Insulator Stabilized By Competing Interactions
• Stability of two-dimensional asymmetric materials with a quadratic band crossing point under four-fermion interaction and impurity scattering
• Quantum Anomalous Hall Phase Stabilized via Realistic Interactions on a Kagome Lattice
• Optoelectronic Fingerprints of Interference between Different Charge Carriers in Graphene Superlattices and Analogies to Twisted Graphene Bilayers
• Fermion-fermion interaction driven instability and criticality of quadratic band crossing systems with the breaking of time-reversal symmetry
• Phase transitions in the Haldane-Hubbard model with ionic potentials
• Higher-order topological insulator in a modified Haldane-Hubbard model
• Anatomy of plasmons in generic Luttinger semimetals
• Band structure and optical response of Kekulé-modulated $\alpha -{\mathcal{T}}_3$ model
• Dynamical properties of quasiparticles in a tunable Kekulé graphene superlattice
• Controlled formation of an isolated miniband in bilayer graphene on an almost commensurate $\sqrt{3}\times \sqrt{3}$ substrate