Novel topological phases of a semi-Dirac Chern insulator in presence of extended range hopping

TL;DR

This paper investigates how extended range hopping affects the topological phases of a semi-Dirac Haldane model, revealing new Chern insulating phases with different Chern numbers and associated edge states.

Contribution

It introduces the impact of third-neighbor hopping on topological phase diagrams and identifies novel Chern insulating phases with higher Chern numbers.

Findings

Presence of Chern numbers ±2 and ±1 in phase diagrams.

Existence of topological phase transitions with abrupt Chern number changes.

Observation of quantized Hall conductance plateaus at e^2/h and 2e^2/h.

Abstract

We study topological properties and the topological phase transitions therein for a semi-Dirac Haldane model on a honeycomb lattice in presence of an extended range (third neighbour) hopping. While in the absence of a third neighbour hopping, $t_3$, the system exhibits gapless electronic spectrum, its presence creates an energy gap in the dispersion. However, the nature of the spectral gap, that is, whether it is trivial or topological needs to be ascertained. We find that the answer depends on the value of $t_3$, and its interplay with the value of the onsite potential that breaks the sublattice symmetry, namely, Semenoff mass ($\Delta$). To elucidate our findings on the topological phases, we demonstrate two kinds of phase diagrams using the available parameter space, one in which the phases are shown in the $\Delta$-$t_3$ plane, and the other one in a more familiar $\Delta$-$\phi$ plane ($\phi$ being the Haldane flux). The phase diagrams depict the presence of Chern insulating lobes comprising of Chern numbers $\pm2$ and $\pm1$ for certain values of $t_3$, along with trivial insulating regions (zero Chern number). Thus there are phase transitions from one topological regime to another which are characterized by abrupt changes in the values of the Chern number. To support the existence of the topological phases, we compute the counter-propagating chiral edge modes in a ribbon geometry. Finally, the anomalous Hall conductivity shows plateaus either at $e^2/h$ or $2e^2/h$ corresponding to these topological phases.