Edge excitations in fractional Chern insulators

Abstract

Recent theoretical papers have demonstrated the realization of fractional quantum anomalous Hall states (also called fractional Chern insulators) in topological flat band lattice models without an external magnetic field. Such newly proposed lattice systems play a vital role in obtaining a large class of fractional topological phases. Here we report the exact numerical studies of edge excitations for such systems in a disk geometry loaded with hard-core bosons, which will serve as a more viable experimental probe for such topologically ordered states. We find convincing numerical evidence of a series of edge excitations characterized by the chiral Luttinger liquid theory for the bosonic fractional Chern insulators in both the honeycomb disk Haldane model and the kagome-lattice disk model. We further verify these current-carrying chiral edge states by inserting a central flux to test their compressibility.