Excitonic insulator phase and dynamics of condensate in a topological one-dimensional model

TL;DR

This study investigates how topological properties influence excitonic insulator phases in a one-dimensional $s-p$ orbital chain, revealing phase transitions, exciton condensate formation, and dynamic responses to laser pulses.

Contribution

It introduces a mean-field model showing topological and trivial insulator phases, and identifies a topological-excitonic insulator transition driven by Coulomb interactions and band inversion.

Findings

Topological insulator and trivial phases exist in the model.

A topological-excitonic insulator phase transition occurs with strong Coulomb interaction.

Exciton oscillations depend on laser pulse frequency and can be observed in optical measurements.

Abstract

We employ mean-field approximation to investigate the interplay between the nontrivial band topology and the formation of excitonic insulator (EI) in a one-dimensional chain of atomic $s-p$ orbitals in the presence of repulsive inter-orbital Coulomb interaction. We find that our model, in a non-interacting regime, admits topological and trivial insulator phases, whereas, in strong Coulomb interaction limit, the chiral symmetry is broken and the system undergoes a topological-excitonic insulator phase transition. The latter phase transition stems from an orbital pseudomagnetization and band inversion around $k=0$. Our findings show that contrary to the topological insulator phase, electron-hole bound states do not form exciton condensate in the trivial band insulator phase due to lack of band inversion. Interestingly, the EI phase in low $s-p$ hybridization limit hosts a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS)/Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) crossover. Irradiated by a pump pulse, our findings reveal that the oscillations of exciton states strongly depend on the frequency of the laser pulse. We further explore the signatures of dynamics of the exciton condensate in optical measurements.