Chern insulator ferromagnets are characterized by a quantized anomalous Hall effect and have so far been identified experimentally in magnetically doped topological insulator thin films and in bilayer graphene moiré superlattices. We classify Chern insulator ferromagnets as either spin or orbital, depending on whether the orbital magnetization results from spontaneous spin polarization combined with spin-orbit interactions, as in the magnetically doped topological insulator case, or directly from spontaneous orbital currents, as in the moiré superlattice case. We argue that, in a given magnetic state, characterized, for example, by the sign of the anomalous Hall effect, the magnetization of an orbital Chern insulator will often have opposite signs for weak n and weak p electrostatic or chemical doping. This property enables pure electrical switching of a magnetic state in the presence of a fixed magnetic field.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.227702 | DOI Listing |
Science
January 2025
Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
Axions, hypothetical elementary particles that remain undetectable in nature, can arise as quasiparticles in three-dimensional crystals known as axion insulators. Previous implementations of axion insulators have largely been limited to two-dimensional systems, leaving their topological properties in three dimensions unexplored in experiment. Here, we realize an axion insulator in a three-dimensional photonic crystal and probe its topological properties.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhys Rev Lett
December 2024
Microelectronics Research Center, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78758, USA.
Theoretical calculations show that twisted double bilayer graphene (TDBG) under a transverse electric field develops a valley Chern number 2 at charge neutrality. Using thermodynamic and thermal activation measurements we report the experimental observation of a universal closing of the charge neutrality gap in the Hofstadter spectrum of TDBG at 1/2 magnetic flux per unit cell, in agreement with theoretical predictions for a valley Chern number 2 gap. Our theoretical analysis of the experimental data shows that the interaction energy, while larger than the flat-band bandwidth in TDBG near 1° does not alter the emergent valley symmetry or the single-particle band topology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhys Rev Lett
December 2024
Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
Measuring bipartite fluctuations of a conserved charge, such as the particle number, is a powerful approach to understanding quantum systems. When the measured region has sharp corners, the bipartite fluctuation receives an additional contribution known to exhibit a universal angle dependence in 2D isotropic and uniform systems. Here we establish that, for generic lattice systems of interacting particles, the corner charge fluctuation is directly related to quantum geometry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Phys Condens Matter
January 2025
Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Apartado Postal 70542, Ciudad de México 04510, Mexico.
Magnetic fields can be introduced into discrete models of quantum systems by the Peierls substitution. For tight-binding Hamiltonians, the substitution results in a set of (Peierls) phases that are usually calculated from the magnetic vector potential. As the potential is not unique, a convenient gauge can be chosen to fit the geometry and simplify calculations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Adv
December 2024
Department of Physics, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Probing ground-state quantum geometry and topology through optical responses is not only of fundamental interest, but it can also offer several practical advantages. Here, using first-principles calculations on thin films of the antiferromagnetic topological insulator MnBiTe, we demonstrate how the generalized optical weight arising from the absorptive part of the optical conductivity can be used to probe the ground-state quantum geometry and topology. We show that three-septuple-layer MnBiTe film exhibit an enhanced, almost-perfect magnetic circular dichroism for a narrow photon energy window in the infrared region.
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