Obstruction to Broken Symmetries in Topological Flat Bands

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhu, Penghao, Feng, Shi, Lu, Yuan-Ming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909313594818560
author Zhu, Penghao
Feng, Shi
Lu, Yuan-Ming
author_facet Zhu, Penghao
Feng, Shi
Lu, Yuan-Ming
contents Motivated by the abundance of symmetry breaking states in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene and other two-dimensional materials, we study superconducting (SC) and charge orders in two-dimensional topological flat bands in the strong correlation regime. By relating the half-filled 2D topological flat bands to the surface states of 3D topological insulators in symmetry class AIII, we reveal the topological obstruction to the formation of gapped SC and inter-valley charge orders without intrinsic topological orders, in the presence of the anti-unitary particle-hole symmetry at half filling. This is a generalization of the Li-Haldane arguments for nodal superconductivity to strongly interacting electrons. In contrast to the $\mathbb{Z}$-valued obstruction derived from the non-interacting band topology, the topological obstruction of interacting electrons in half-filled flat bands has a $\mathbb{Z}_{8}$ classification, depending on the charge (valley) Chern number of the superconducting (inter-valley charge) orders. This is demonstrated by an interacting Hamiltonian for half-filled flat bands with a net Chern number $C=4$, where superconductivity and $\mathbb{Z}_2$ topological order coexist in a gapped ground state with particle-hole symmetry.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_14533
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Obstruction to Broken Symmetries in Topological Flat Bands
Zhu, Penghao
Feng, Shi
Lu, Yuan-Ming
Strongly Correlated Electrons
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Motivated by the abundance of symmetry breaking states in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene and other two-dimensional materials, we study superconducting (SC) and charge orders in two-dimensional topological flat bands in the strong correlation regime. By relating the half-filled 2D topological flat bands to the surface states of 3D topological insulators in symmetry class AIII, we reveal the topological obstruction to the formation of gapped SC and inter-valley charge orders without intrinsic topological orders, in the presence of the anti-unitary particle-hole symmetry at half filling. This is a generalization of the Li-Haldane arguments for nodal superconductivity to strongly interacting electrons. In contrast to the $\mathbb{Z}$-valued obstruction derived from the non-interacting band topology, the topological obstruction of interacting electrons in half-filled flat bands has a $\mathbb{Z}_{8}$ classification, depending on the charge (valley) Chern number of the superconducting (inter-valley charge) orders. This is demonstrated by an interacting Hamiltonian for half-filled flat bands with a net Chern number $C=4$, where superconductivity and $\mathbb{Z}_2$ topological order coexist in a gapped ground state with particle-hole symmetry.
title Obstruction to Broken Symmetries in Topological Flat Bands
topic Strongly Correlated Electrons
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.14533