Interaction-induced anomalous quantum Hall state on the honeycomb lattice

Abstract

We examine the existence of the interaction-generated quantum anomalous Hall phase on the honeycomb lattice. For the spinless model at half-filling, the existence of a quantum anomalous Hall phase (Chern insulator phase) has been predicted using mean-field methods. However, recent exact diagonalization studies for small clusters with periodic boundary conditions have not found a clear sign of an interaction-driven Chern insulator phase. We use the exact diagonalization method to study properties of small clusters with open boundary conditions, and contrary to previous studies, we find clear signatures of the topological phase transition for finite-size clusters. We also examine the applicability of the entangled-plaquette-state (correlator-product-state) ansatz to describe the ground states of the system. Within this approach the lattice is covered with plaquettes and the ground-state wave function is written in terms of the plaquette coefficients. Configurational weights can then be optimized using a variational Monte Carlo algorithm. Using the entangled-plaquette-state ansatz we study the ground-state properties of the system for larger system sizes and show that the results agree with the exact diagonalization results for small clusters. This confirms the validity of the entangled-plaquette-state ansatz to describe the ground states of the system and provides further confirmation of the existence of the quantum anomalous Hall phase in the thermodynamic limit, as predicted by mean-field theory calculations.