A monolayer of transition metal trichalcogenides has received a lot of attention as potential two dimensional magnetic materials. The system has a honeycomb structure of transition metal ions, where both spin-orbit coupling and electron correlation effect play an important role. Here, motivated by these transition metal series with effective doping or mixed valence case, we propose the possible realization of magnetic Chern insulators at quarter filled honeycomb lattice. We show that the interplay of intrinsic spin-orbit coupling and electron correlation opens a wide region of ferromagnetic Chern insulating phases in between metals and normal insulators. Within the mean field approximation, we present the phase diagram of a quarter filled Kane-Mele Hubbard model and also discuss the effects of Rashba spin-orbit coupling and nearest neighbor interactions on it.
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 investigate the electronic physics of layered Ni-based trichalcogenide NiPX$_3$ (X=S, Se), a member of transition-metal trichalcogenides (TMTs) with the chemical formula, ABX$_3$. These Ni-based TMTs distinguish themselves from other TMTs as their low energy electronic physics can be effectively described by the two $e_g$ d-orbitals. The major band kinematics is characterized by the unusal long-range effective hopping between two third nearest-neighbor (TNN) Ni sites in the two-dimensional Ni honeycomb lattice so that the Ni lattice can be equivalently viewed as four weakly coupled honeycom…
We show a tight-binding model for double perovskite monolayers grown in the {001} crystallographic direction can exhibit higher Chern numbers for the lowest band of the model dispersion in the absence of an applied magnetic field, including $\pm2$, $\pm4$, $\pm6$, and $\pm8$, for model parameters and terms relevant to Sr$_2$CrWO$_6$ (SCWO). We further show it is possible to tune between these different topological phases by applying a weak in-plane magnetic field. These results may be important for experimentally realizing exotic band topologies -- and even quantum anomalous Hall insulators wi…
Moiré systems have emerged in recent years as a rich platform to study strong correlations. Here, we will discuss a simple, experimentally feasible setup based on periodically strained graphene that reproduces several key aspects of twisted moiré heterostructures -- but without introducing a twist. We consider a monolayer graphene sheet subject to a $C_2$-breaking periodic strain-induced psuedomagnetic field (PMF) with period $L_M \gg a$, along with a scalar potential of the same period. This system has {\it almost ideal} flat bands with valley-resolved Chern number $\pm 1$, where the deviatio…
Weyl semimetals (WSMs) have recently stimulated intensive interest because they exhibit fascinating physical properties and also promise exciting technological applications. So far, however, the few conrmed magnetic WSMs generally have a large number of Weyl points either located away from the Fermi level (EF ) or shrouded by nontopological Fermi surface pockets. Based on first principles density functional theory calculations, we establish cubic double perovskite BaEuNiOsO6 to be a high Curie temperature (Tc) ferromagnetic WSM with magnetization along the [111] direction, just two pairs of We…
We present a systematic study of the electronic and magnetic properties of two-dimensional ordered alloys, consisting of two representative hosts (MnPS$_3$ and NiPS$_3$) of transition metal phosphorus trichalcogenides doped with $3d$ elements. For both hosts our DFT+U calculations are able to qualitatively reproduce the ratios and signs of all experimentally observed magnetic couplings. The relative strength of all antiferromagnetic exchange couplings, both in MnPS$_3$ as well as in NiPS$_3$, can successfully be explained using an effective direct exchange model: they reveal that the third-nei…
We consider a hitherto unexplored setting of stacked multilayer ($\mathcal{N}$) Lieb lattice which undergoes an unusual topological transition in the presence of intra-layer spin-orbit coupling (SOC). The specific stacking configuration induces an effective non-symmorphic 2D lattice structure, even though the constituent monolayer Lieb lattice is characterized by a symmorphic space group. This emergent non-symmorphicity leads to multiple doubly-degenerate bands extending over the edge of the Brillouin zone (i.e. Quadratic Band Crossing Lines). In the presence of intra-layer SOC, these doubly-d…
We develop a Fermionic Chern-Simons (CS) theory for the fractional quantum Hall effect in monolayer graphene with SU(4) symmetry, arising from the spin and the valley degrees of freedom, which involves four distinct CS gauge fields. We choose the corresponding elements of the CS coupling matrix such that an even number of spin and valley quantum number dependent flux quanta is attached to all electrons and that any electron with a given spin and valley quantum number sees an integer number of flux attached to other electrons with different (spin and valley) quantum numbers. Using this CS matri…
A sizable transverse thermoelectric coefficient N , large to the extent that it potentially serves applications, is predicted to arise, by means of first-principles calculations, in a Skyrmion crystal assumed on EuO monolayer where carrier electrons are introduced upon a quantum anomalous Hall insulating phase of Chern number C = 2. This encourages future experiments to pursue such an effect.
Intervalley Band Crossing and Transition of Fractional Chern Insulators in Floquet Twisted Bilayer MoTe$_2$
Zhejiang Institute of Modern Physics, Zhejiang University(浙江大学现代物理研究所);Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Micro-Nano Quantum Chips and Quantum Control, School of Physics, Zhejiang University(浙江大学物理学院微纳量子芯片与量子控制浙江省重点实验室)
Theoretically it has been known that breaking spin-degeneracy and effectively realizing 'spinless fermions' is a promising path to topological superconductors. Yet, topological superconductors are rare to date. Here, we propose to realize spinless fermions by splitting the spin-degeneracy in momentum space. Specifically, we identify monolayer hole-doped transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD)s as candidates for topological superconductors out of such momentum-space-split spinless fermions. Although electron-doped TMDs have recently been found superconducting, the observed superconductivity is un…
Based on density functional theory (DFT) calculations, we predict that a monolayer of OsCl$_3$---a layered material whose interlayer coupling is weaker than in graphite---possesses a quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulating phase generated by the combination of honeycomb lattice of osmium atoms, their strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and ferromagnetic ground state with {\em in-plane} easy-axis. The band gap opened by SOC is \mbox{$E_g \simeq 67$ meV} (or \mbox{$\simeq 191$ meV} if the easy-axis can be tilted out of the plane by an external electric field), and the estimated Curie temperature of…
Magnetism typically arises from the joint effect of Fermi statistics and repulsive Coulomb interactions, which favors ground states with non-zero electron spin. As a result, controlling spin magnetism with electric fields---a longstanding technological goal in spintronics and multiferroics---can be achieved only indirectly. Here, we experimentally demonstrate direct electric field control of magnetic states in an orbital Chern insulator, a magnetic system in which non-trivial band topology favors long range order of orbital angular momentum but the spins are thought to remain disordered. We us…
Fractional Chern Insulators Transition in Non-ideal Flat Bands of Twisted Mono-bilayer Graphene
State Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Physics and Chip Technologies, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院半导体研究所半导体物理与芯片技术国家重点实验室);Center for Quantum Matter, Zhejiang University(浙江大学量子物质中心);College of Materials Science and Opto-electronic Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院大学材料科学与光电技术学院)
Two monolayers of graphene twisted by a small `magic' angle exhibit nearly flat bands leading to correlated electronic states and superconductivity, whose precise nature including possible broken symmetries, remain under debate. Here we theoretically study a related but different system with reduced symmetry - twisted {\em double} bilayer graphene (TDBLG), consisting of {\em two} Bernal stacked bilayer graphene sheets, twisted with respect to one another. Unlike the monolayer case, we show that isolated flat bands only appear on application of a vertical displacement field $D$. We construct a …
We theoretically study the correlated insulator states, quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) states, and field-induced topological transitions between different correlated states in twisted multilayer graphene systems. Taking twisted bilayer-monolayer graphene and twisted double-bilayer graphene as examples, we show that both systems stay in spin polarized, $C_{3z}$-broken insulator states with zero Chern number at 1/2 filling of the flat bands under finite displacement fields. In some cases these spin polarized, nematic insulator states are in the quantum valley Hall phase by virtue of the nontrivial…