2014/09/30 by Tianhan Liu, Benoît Douçot, Karyn Le Hur
Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Dirac fermion #Effective mass (spring–mass system) #Electron #Fermion #Lattice (music) #Physics #Quantum Hall effect #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum mechanics #Quantum spin Hall effect #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Topological insulator #Topology (electrical circuits) #cond-mat.quant-gas #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.93.195153
published as Phys. Rev. B 93, 195153 (2016)
arxiv created 2016/05/18 · openalex publication_date 2016/05/24 · arxiv updated 2016/05/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We engineer topological insulating phases in a fermion-fermion mixture on the honeycomb lattice, without resorting to artificial gauge fields or spin-orbit couplings and considering only local interactions. Essentially, upon integrating out the fast component (characterized by a larger hopping amplitude) in a finite region of dopings, we obtain an effective interaction between the slow fermions at half-filling, which acquires a Haldane mass with opposite parity in the two valleys of the Dirac cones, thus triggering a quantum anomalous Hall effect. We carefully analyze the competition between the induced Semenoff-type mass (producing charge density wave orders in real space) versus the Haldane mass (quantum anomalous Hall phase), as a function of the chemical potential of the fast fermions. If the second species involves spin-1/2 particles, this interaction may induce a quantum spin Hall phase. Such fermion-fermion mixtures can be realized in optical lattices or in graphene heterostructures.