The antiferromagnetic Chern insulator phase in the Kane-Mele-Hubbard model

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the existence of an antiferromagnetic Chern insulator phase in the Kane-Mele-Hubbard model, characterized by AFM order and quantized Hall conductance, using exact diagonalization and a novel computational approach.

Contribution

It provides numerical evidence for the AFCI phase in the KMH model respecting TRS and introduces a modified scheme to compute a robust quantized Chern number.

Findings

Evidence of AFCI phase with AFM correlations and quantized Hall conductance

Breakdown of adiabatic continuity indicating TRS breaking instability

A modified computational scheme yields a stable C=1 Chern number

Abstract

The emergence of the antiferromagnetic (AFM) Chern insulator (AFCI) phase in the Kane-Mele-Hubbard (KMH) model with a finite sublattice potential is investigated. The AFCI, characterized by AFM correlations coexisting with quantized Hall conductance, has long raised the question of whether it can exist in the KMH model that respects time-reversal symmetry (TRS). Using exact diagonalization, we analyze the excitation gap, anisotropic AFM correlations along the $z$ axis and in the $xy$ plane, and the fidelity susceptibility under twisted boundary conditions, all of which provide consistent evidence for the AFCI phase. In particular, our numerical evaluation on the (spin) Chern number reveals a breakdown of adiabatic continuity in the twist-angle space, indicating an instability toward TRS breaking driven by Hubbard-induced AFM perturbations. A modified computational scheme is further proposed, which yields a robust quantized Chern number $C=1$ within this phase.