Lattice fermion simulation of spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking in a helical Luttinger liquid

Abstract

We extend a recently developed "tangent fermion" method to discretize the Hamiltonian of a helical Luttinger liquid on a one-dimensional lattice, including two-particle backscattering processes that may open a gap in the spectrum. The fermion-doubling obstruction of the sine dispersion is avoided by working with a tangent dispersion, preserving the time-reversal symmetry of the Hamiltonian. The numerical results from a tensor network calculation on a finite lattice confirm the expectation from infinite-system analytics, that a gapped phase with spontaneously broken time-reversal symmetry emerges when the Fermi level is tuned to the Dirac point and the Luttinger parameter crosses a critical value.

Added a new figure showing the excitation spectrum 8 pages, 6 figures