Interaction-induced Metal to Topological Insulator Transition

TL;DR

This study uses exact diagonalizations to show that strong electron interactions can induce a transition from a metallic state to a topological insulator with magnetic order, revealing a first-order topological phase transition.

Contribution

It demonstrates that strong correlations can drive a metal-to-topological insulator transition with spontaneous magnetization, highlighting a new mechanism for topological phase changes.

Findings

Metal state becomes a Chern insulator under strong correlations

Transition involves spontaneous breaking of time reversal symmetry

Transition appears to be of first order

Abstract

By means of exact diagonalizations, the Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang model at quarter-filling in the limit of strong Hubbard on-site repulsion is investigated. We find that the non-interacting metallic state will be turned into a Chern insulator with saturated magnetization under strong correlations. That is, at such a metal-insulator transition, both the topological and the magnetic properties of the system are changed due to spontaneous breaking of time reversal symmetry in the ground states. According to our findings, this topological phase transition seems to be of first order. Our results illustrate the interesting physics in topological Mott transitions and provide guidance to the search of more interaction-induced topological phases in similar systems.