Disorder-induced topological phase transitions on Lieb lattices

作者：Chen, Rui; Xu, Dong-Hui^*; Zhou, Bin

来源：Physical Review B, 2017, 96(20): 205304.

DOI：10.1103/PhysRevB.96.205304

• HUBBARD-MODEL
• STATES

Motivated by the very recent experimental realization of electronic Lieb lattices and research interest on topological states of matter, we study the topological phase transitions driven by Anderson-type disorder on spin-orbit coupled Lieb lattices in the presence of spin-independent and-dependent staggered potentials. By combining the recursive Green's-function and self-consistent Born approximation methods, we found that both time-reversal-invariant and time-reversal-symmetry-broken spin-orbit coupled Lieb lattice systems can host the disorder-induced gapful topological phases, including the quantum spin Hall insulator (QSHI) and quantum anomalous Hall insulator (QAHI) phases. For the time-reversal-invariant case, the disorder induces a topological phase transition directly from a normal insulator (NI) to the QSHI, while for the time-reversal-symmetry-broken case, the disorder can induce either a QAHI-QSHI phase transition or a NI-QAHI-QSHI phase transition, depending on the initial state of the system. Remarkably, the time-reversal-symmetry-broken QSHI phase can be induced by Anderson-type disorder on the spin-orbit coupled Lieb lattices without time-reversal symmetry.

• 出版日期2017-11-17
• 单位湖北大学