1201.5874 (S. R. Hassan et al.)

Anomalous quantum Hall states in an optical lattice    [PDF]

S. R. Hassan, Sandeep Goyal, R. Shankar, David Sénéchal

We analyze the Physics of cold atoms in honeycomb optical lattices with
on-site repulsion and spin-orbit couplings that break time reversal symmetry.
Such systems, at half filling and large on-site repulsion, have been proposed
as a possible realization of the Kitaev model. The spin-orbit couplings break
the spin degeneracy and, if strong-enough, lead to four non-overlapping bands
in the non-interacting limit. These bands carry non-zero Chern number and
therefore the non-interacting system has non-zero angular momentum and chiral
edge states at 1/4 and 3/4 filling. We have investigated the effect of
interactions using the variational cluster perturbation theory and conclude
that the chiral edge states exist in finite range of interaction and hopping
parameter space.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.5874