Spectra of Magnetoroton and Chiral Graviton Modes of Fractional Chern Insulator

TL;DR

This paper uses advanced computational methods to analyze the excitation spectra of fractional Chern insulators, revealing detailed behaviors of magnetoroton and chiral graviton modes near phase transitions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of TDVP to compute excitation spectra in FCIs and uncovers the chiral nature and different chiralities of graviton modes.

Findings

Magnetoroton mode softens and sharpens near the FCI-to-CDW transition.

Chiral graviton modes are resolved around the Γ point with opposite chiralities.

The single-particle gap remains finite as the magnetoroton softens.

Abstract

Employing the state-of-the-art time-dependent variational principle (TDVP) algorithm, we compute the spectra of charge-neutral excitations in the $\nu=1/2$ (bosonic) \updated{ and $1/3$ (fermionic) fractional Chern insulator (FCI)} on the Haldane honeycomb lattice model. The magnetoroton visualized from the dynamic density structure factor acquires a minimum gap at finite momentum that can go soft with increasing interaction and give rise to a charge density wave (CDW) at the same wavevector. As the system approaches the FCI-to-CDW transition point, we observe a pronounced sharpening of the roton mode, suggesting that the magnetoroton behaves more like a quasiparticle as it softens. Notably, this occurs while the single-particle gap remains finite. Besides the magnetoroton at finite momentum, we also construct quadrupolar chiral operators in a discrete lattice and resolve the chiral graviton mode around the $\Gamma$ point of the Brillouin zone. Furthermore, we show the different chiralities of the gravitons of FCIs with opposite-sign Hall conductance for the first time.