Combined spontaneous symmetry-breaking and symmetry-protected topological order from cluster charge interactions
The study of symmetry-protected topological states in the presence of electron correlations has recently aroused great interest as rich and exotic phenomena can emerge. Here we report a concrete example by employing a large-scale unbiased quantum Monte Carlo study of the Kane-Mele model with cluster...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
American Physical Society
2020-08-01
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| Series: | Physical Review Research |
| Online Access: | http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.033291 |
| Summary: | The study of symmetry-protected topological states in the presence of electron correlations has recently aroused great interest as rich and exotic phenomena can emerge. Here we report a concrete example by employing a large-scale unbiased quantum Monte Carlo study of the Kane-Mele model with cluster charge interactions. The ground-state phase diagram for the model at half filling is established. Our simulation identifies the coexistence of a symmetry-protected topological order with a symmetry-breaking Kekulé valence bond order and shows that the spontaneous symmetry breaking is accompanied by an interaction-driven topological phase transition (TPT). This TPT features the appearance of zeros of a single-particle Green's function and gap closing in a spin channel rather than a single-particle excitation spectrum and thus has no mean-field correspondence. |
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| ISSN: | 2643-1564 |