As a topological insulator, the quantum Hall (QH) effect is indexed by the Chern and spin-Chern numbers $\mathcal{C}$ and $\mathcal{C}_{\text{spin}}$. We have only $\mathcal{C}_{\text{spin}}=0$ or $\pm \frac{1}{2}$ in conventional QH systems. We investigate QH effects in generic monolayer honeycomb systems. We search for spin-resolved characteristic patterns by exploring Hofstadter's butterfly diagrams in the lattice theory and fan diagrams in the low-energy Dirac theory. The Chern and spin-Chern numbers are calculated based on the bulk-edge correspondence in the lattice theory and on the Kubo formula in the Dirac theory. It is shown that the spin-Chern number can takes an arbitrary high value for certain QH systems in coexistence with buckled structure and magnetic order. This is a new type of topological insulators. Samples may be provided by silicene with ferromagnetic order and transition-metal oxide with antiferromagnetic order.
Twelve two-dimensional group-IV monochalcogenide monolayers (SiS, SiSe, SiTe, GeS, GeSe, GeTe, SnS, SnSe, SnTe, PbS, PbSe, and PbTe) with a buckled honeycomb atomistic structure--belonging to symmetry group P3m1--and an out-of-plane intrinsic electric polarization are shown to be metastable by three independendent methods. First, we uncover a coordination-preserving structural transformation from the low-buckled honeycomb structure onto the lower-energy Pnm2$_1$ (or Pmmn for PbS, PbSe, and PbTe) phase to estimate {\em energy barriers} $E_B$ that must be overcome during such structural transfor…
Higher Order Topological Insulators (HOTI) are $d$-spatial dimensional systems featuring topologically protected gap-less states at their $(d-n)$-dimensional boundaries. With the help of \textit{ab-initio} calculations and tight binding models along with symmetry considerations we show that monolayer buckled honeycomb structures of group-V elements (Sb,As), which have already been synthesized, belong in this category and have a charge fractionalization of $\frac{e}{2}$ at the corner states as well as weak topological edge states, all protected by their properties under the inversion operation …
The optical and Boltzmann conductivities have been calculated for doped buckled honeycomb lattice structures such as silicene and germanene, as functions of temperature. By making use of previous results for the temperature-dependent chemical potential for gapped Dirac systems, we have calculated the dynamical polarization function and investigated the way in which initial doping affects its behavior at arbitrary temperature, frequency and wave number. We have calculated the optical and Boltzmann conductivities in the relaxation time approximation. Both these quantities are directly related to…
We study the dynamical stability of elemental two-dimensional (2D) metals from Li to Pb by calculating the phonon band structure from first principles, where 2D structures are assumed to be planer hexagonal, buckled honeycomb, and buckled square lattice structures. We show the relationship between the stability of 2D structures and that of three-dimensional structures. This provides a material design concept for alloys, where the similarity with regard to the stable 2D structures, rather than the energetic stability of alloy, is important to yield dynamically stable alloys.
After establishing the fundamental understanding and the high throughput topological characterization of nearly all inorganic three-dimensional materials, the general interest and the demand of functional applications drive the research of topological insulators to the exploration of systems with a more robust topological nature and fewer fabrication challenges. The successful demonstration of the room-temperature quantum spin Hall (QSH) states in bismuthene/SiC(0001), thus, triggers the search of two-dimensional topological systems that are experimentally easy to access and of even larger top…
The dynamical stability of three-dimensional (3D) Lennard-Jones (LJ) crystals has been studied for many years. The face-centered-cubic and hexagonal close packed structures are dynamically stable, while the body-centered cubic structure is stable only for long range LJ potentials that are characterized by relatively small integer pairs $(m,n)$. Here, we study the dynamical stability of two-dimensional (2D) LJ crystals, where the planar hexagonal, the buckled honeycomb, and the buckled square structures are assumed. We demonstrate that the stability property of 2D and 3D LJ crystals can be clas…
Combining tight-binding (TB) models with first-principles calculations, we investigate electronic and topological properties of plumbene. Different from the other two-dimensional (2D) topologically nontrivial insulators in group IVA (from graphene to stanene), low-buckled plumbene is a topologically trivial insulator. The plumbene without spin-orbit coupling exhibits simultaneously two kinds of degeneracies, i.e., quadratic non-Dirac and linear Dirac band dispersions around the Γand K/K' points, respectively. Our TB model calculations show that it is the coupling between the two topological st…
The electronic band topology of monolayer $β$-Sb (antimonene) is studied from the flat honeycomb to the equilibrium buckled structure using first-principles calculations and analyzed using a tight-binding model and low energy Hamiltonians. In flat monolayer Sb, the Fermi level occurs near the intersection of two warped Dirac cones, one associated with the $p_z$-orbitals, and one with the $\{p_x,p_y\}$-orbitals. The differently oriented threefold warping of these two cones leads to an unusually shaped nodal line, which leads to anisotropic in-plane transport properties and goniopolarity. A slig…
High-level first-principles computations predict blue phosphorene bilayer to be a two-dimensional metal. This structure has not been considered before and was identified by employing a block-diagram scheme that yields the complete set of five high-symmetry stacking configurations of buckled honeycomb layers, and allows their unambiguous classification. We show that all of these stacking configurations are stable or at least metastable configurations both for blue phosphorene and gray arsenene bilayers. For blue phosphorene, the most stable stacking configuration has not yet been reported, and …
The possibility of dissipationless chiral edge states without the need of an external magnetic field in the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) offers a great potential in electronic/spintronic applications. The biggest hurdle for the realization of a room-temperature magnetic Chern insulator is to find a structurally stable material with a sufficiently large energy gap and Curie temperature that can be easily implemented in electronic devices. This work based on first-principle methods shows that a single atomic layer of V2O3 with honeycomb-kagome (HK) lattice is structurally stable with a s…
Using first principles calculations, the energetic stability of two-dimensional (2D) binary compounds $XY$ is investigated, where $X$ and $Y$ indicate the metallic element from Li to Pb in the periodic table. Here, 1081 compounds in the buckled honeycomb (BHC), buckled square, B2, L1$_0$, and B$_h$ structures are studied. For the compounds that have negative formation energy in the BHC structure or the compounds that can have the B$_h$ structure, the phonon dispersions of the 2D structures are also calculated. We demonstrate that (i) a negative formation energy is neither a sufficient nor nece…
It is known that there is a wide class of quasi-two-dimensional graphenelike nanomaterials which in many respects can outperform graphene. So, here in addition to graphene, the attention is directed to stanene (buckled honeycomb structure) and phosphorene (puckered honeycomb structure). It is shown that, depending on the doping, these materials can have magnetically ordered edges. Computed diagrams of magnetic phases illustrate that, on the one hand, n-type doped narrow zigzag nanoribbons of graphene and stanene have antiferromagnetically aligned magnetic moments between the edges. On the othe…
Spin-1 Dirac dispersion and Chern insulating phases in 2D honeycomb Sierpiński fractal
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Tirupati（印度科学教育与研究研究所蒂鲁帕提分校）；Kwansei Gakuin University（关西学院大学）；National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS)（国立材料研究所）
We investigate both first-order topology, as realized through Haldane's model, and second-order topology, implemented through an additional Kekulé-distortion, on the honeycomb lattice. The interplay and competition of both terms result in a phase diagram at half-filling which contains twelve distinct phases. All phases can be characterized by the first Chern number or by a quantized $\mathbb{Z}_Q$ Berry phase. Highlights include phases with high Chern numbers, a novel $\mathbb{Z}_6$ topological phase, but also coupled kagome-lattice Chern insulators. Furthermore, we explore the insulating phas…
We study the effect of driving a two-dimensional honeycomb system out of equilibrium using an elliptically polarized light as a time-dependent perturbation. In particular, we try to understand the topological phase diagram of this driven system when the external drive is a vector potential given by ${\bf A}(t) = (A_{0x} \cos(Ωt), A_{0y} \cos(Ωt + ϕ_0))$. These topological phases are characterized by the Floquet Chern number which, in each of these phases, is related to the number of robust edge modes on a nanoribbon. We show that varying the ratio $A_{0x}/A_{0y}$ of the external drive is a pos…
We study topological states of honeycomb photonic crystals in absence of inversion symmetry using plane wave expansion and finite element methods. The breaking of inversion symmetry in honeycomb lattice leads to contrasting topological valley indices, i.e., the valley-dependent Chern numbers in momentum space. We find that the topological corner states appear for 60$^\circ$ degree corners, but absent for other corners, which can be understood as the sign flip of valley Chern number at the corner. Our results provide an experimentally feasible platform for exploring valley-dependent higher-orde…
We reveal the rich magnon topology in honeycomb bilayer ferromagnets (HBF) induced by the combined effect of interlayer exchange, Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI), and electrostatic doping (ED). In particular, we present a systematic study of the Hamiltonian non-adiabatic evolution in the HBF parametric space, spanned by the symmetry-breaking terms (DMI and ED) and interlayer exchange. We determine the band closure manifolds which are found to divide the parametric space into six distinct regions, matched with five distinct topological phases and one topologically trivial phase. The cha…
We theoretically study magnon-phonon hybrid excitations (magnon-polarons) in two-dimensional antiferromagnets on a honeycomb lattice. With an in-plane Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) allowed from mirror symmetry breaking from phonons, we find non-trivial Berry curvature around the anti-crossing rings among magnon and both optical and acoustic phonon bands, which gives rise to finite Chern numbers. We show that the Chern numbers of the magnon-polaron bands can be manipulated by changing the magnetic field direction or strength. We evaluate the thermal Hall conductivity reflecting the no…
The Chern insulator displays a quantized Hall effect without Landau levels. In a landmark paper in 1988, Haldane showed that a Chern insulator could be realized through complex next-nearest-neighbor hopping in a honeycomb lattice. Despite its profound impact on the field of topological physics and recent implementation in cold-atom experiments, the Haldane model has remained elusive in solid-state materials. Here, we report the experimental realization of a Haldane Chern insulator in AB-stacked MoTe2/WSe2 moiré bilayers, which form a honeycomb moiré lattice with two sublattices residing in dif…
We theoretically study the effect of magnetic moiré superlattice on the topological surface states by introducing a continuum model of Dirac electrons with a single Dirac cone moving in the time-reversal symmetry breaking periodic pontential. The Zeeman-type moiré potentials generically gap out the moiré surface Dirac cones and give rise to isolated flat Chern minibands with Chern number $\pm1$. This result provides a promising platform for realizing the time-reversal breaking correlated topological phases. In a $C_6$ periodic potential, when the scalar $U_0$ and Zeeman $Δ_1$ moiré potential s…
We investigated the topological property of magnon bands in the collinear magnetic orders of zigzag and stripy phases for the antiferromagnetic honeycomb lattice and identified Berry curvature and symmetry constraints on the magnon band structure. Different symmetries of both zigzag and stripy phases lead to different topological properties, in particular, the magnon bands of the stripy phase being disentangled with a finite Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) term with non-zero spin Chern number. This is corroborated by calculating the spin Nernst effect. Our study establishes the existence of the non…
The Haldane model on a honeycomb lattice is a paradigmatic example of a system featuring quantized Hall conductivity in the absence of an external magnetic field, that is, a quantum anomalous Hall effect. Recent theoretical work predicted that the anomalous Hall conductivity of massive Dirac fermions can display Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) oscillations, which could be observed in topological insulators and honeycomb layers with strong spin--orbit coupling. Here, we investigate the electronic transport properties of Chern insulators subject to high magnetic fields by means of accurate spectral expa…
The discovery of monolayer graphene has initiated two fertile fields in modern condensed matter physics, Dirac semimetals and atomically-thin layered materials. When these trends meet again in transition metal compounds, which possess spin and orbital degrees of freedom and strong electron correlations, more exotic phenomena are expected to emerge in the cross section of topological states of matter and Mott physics. Here, we show by using ab initio calculations that a monolayer form of transition metal trichalcogenides (TMTs), which has a honeycomb network of transition metal cations, may exh…
We prove the existence of higher-order topological insulators with protected chiral hinge modes in quasi-two-dimensional systems made out of coupled layers stacked in an inversion-symmetric manner. In particular, we show that an external magnetic field drives a stack of alternating p- and n-doped buckled honeycomb layers into a higher-order topological phase, characterized by a non-trivial three-dimensional ${\mathbb Z}_2$ invariant. We identify silicene multilayers as a potential material platform for the experimental detection of this novel topological insulating phase.
The valley Chern-effect is theoretically demonstrated with a novel alternating current circuitry, where closed-loop LC-resonators sitting at the nodes of a honeycomb lattice are inductively coupled along the bonds. This enables us to generate a dynamical matrix which copies identically the Hamiltonian driving the electrons in graphene. The valley-Chern effect is generated by splitting the inversion symmetry of the lattice. After a detailed study of the Berry curvature landscape and of the localization of the interface modes, we derive an optimal configuration of the circuit. Furthermore, we sh…
We investigate a new class of topological antiferromagnetic (AF) Chern insulators driven by electronic interactions in two-dimensional systems without inversion symmetry. Despite the absence of a net magnetization, AF Chern insulators (AFCI) possess a nonzero Chern number $C$ and exhibit the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE). Their existence is guaranteed by the bifurcation of the boundary line of Weyl points between a quantum spin Hall insulator and a topologically trivial phase with the emergence of AF long-range order. As a concrete example, we study the phase structure of the honeycomb …
We theoretically propose a second-order topological magnon insulator by stacking the van der Waals honeycomb ferromagnets with antiferromagnetic interlayer coupling. The system exhibits Z$_{2}$ topological phase, protected by pseudo-time-reversal symmetry (PTRS). An easy-plane anisotropy term breaks PTRS and destroys the topological phase. Nevertheless, it respects a magnetic two-fold rotational symmetry which protects a second-order topological phase with corner modes in bilayer and hinge modes along stacking direction. Moreover, an introduced staggered interlayer coupling establishes a Z$_{2…
