Interaction-driven plateau transition between integer and fractional Chern Insulators

Abstract

We present numerical evidence of an interaction-driven quantum Hall plateau transition between a $|C|>1$ Chern Insulator (CI) and a $\nu =1/3$ Laughlin state in the Harper-Hofstadter model. We study the model at flux densities $p/q$, where the lowest Landau level (LLL) manifold comprises $p$ magnetic sub-bands. For weak interactions, the model realises integer CIs corresponding to filled sub-bands, while strongly interacting candidate states include fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states at LLL filling fractions $\nu =r/t$. These phases may compete at the same particle density when $p=t$. As a concrete example, we numerically explore the physics at flux density $n_{\varphi }=3/11$, where we show evidence that a direct transition occurs between a CI and a $\nu =1/3$ Laughlin state, which we characterise in terms of its critical, topological and entanglement properties. We also show that strong interactions generically stabilise a $\nu =1/3$ Laughlin state even when the LLL is split into multiple bands, and introduce a powerful methodology to extract its topological entanglement entropy by exploiting the scaling of magnetic length with $n_{\varphi }$.

12 pages, 12 figures including appendices; v2: substantial addition of numerical data to support finite entanglement scaling in the transition region, demonstrating exotic critical properties

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Fractional Chern insulators with a non-Landau level continuum limit
• Emergent QCD${}_3$ Quantum Phase Transitions of Fractional Chern Insulators