Minimal Fractional Topological Insulator in half-filled conjugate moir\'{e} Chern bands

TL;DR

This paper introduces a minimal fractional topological insulator model in half-filled conjugate Chern bands, explaining recent experimental observations and characterizing its topological features and stability.

Contribution

It proposes the first minimal, time-reversal symmetric fractional topological insulator in half-filled conjugate Chern bands with detailed topological properties.

Findings

Fully gapped topological order with 16 Abelian anyons

Minimally-charged anyon with charge e/2 and fractional quantum spin-Hall conductivity

Unique time-reversal symmetric topological state with smallest quantum dimension

Abstract

We propose a "minimal" fractional topological insulator (mFTI), motivated by the recent experimental report on the signatures of FTI at total filling factor $\nu_{\rm tot} = 3$ in a transition metal dichalcogenide moir\'{e} system. The observed FTI at $\nu_{\rm tot} = 3$ is likely given by a topological state living in a pair of half-filled conjugate Chern bands with Chern numbers $C=\pm 1$ on top of another pair of fully-filled conjugate Chern bands. We propose the mFTI as a strong candidate topological state in the half-filled conjugate Chern bands. The mFTI is characterized by the following features: (1) It is a fully gapped topological order (TO) with 16 Abelian anyons if the electron is considered trivial (32 including electrons); (2) the minimally-charged anyon carries electric charge $e^\ast = e/2$, together with the fractional quantum spin-Hall conductivity, implying the robustness of the mFTI's gapless edge state whenever time-reversal symmetry and charge conversation are present; (3) the mFTI is "minimal" in the sense that it has the smallest total quantum dimension (a metric for the TO's complexity) within all the TOs that can potentially be realized at the same electron filling and with the same Hall transports; the mFTI is also the unique one that respects time-reversal symmetry. (4) the mFTI is the common descendant of multiple valley-decoupled "product TOs" with larger quantum dimensions. It can also be viewed as the result of gauging multiple symmetry-protected topological states. Similar mFTIs can be constructed for a pair of $1/q$-filled conjugate Chern bands. We classify the mFTIs via the stability of the gapless interfaces between them.