- Letter
Correlated Zak insulator in organic antiferromagnets
Phys. Rev. B 108, L081120 – Published 22 August, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.108.L081120
Abstract
Searching for topological insulators in solids is one of the main issues of modern condensed-matter physics since robust gapless edge or surface states of the topological insulators can be used as building blocks of next-generation devices. Enhancing spin-orbit couplings is a promising way to realize topological insulators in solids, whereas the amplitude of the spin-orbit couplings is not sufficiently large in most materials. Here, we show a way to realize a topological state characterized by the quantized Zak phase, termed the Zak insulator with spin-polarized edges in organic antiferromagnetic Mott insulators without relying on the spin-orbit coupling. The obtained Zak insulator can have a large charge gap compared to the conventional topological insulators since Coulomb interactions mainly govern the amplitude of the charge gap in the antiferromagnetic Mott insulators. Besides the mean-field analysis, we demonstrate that the Zak insulator survives against electron correlation effects by calculating the many-body Zak phase. Our finding provides an unprecedented way to realize a topological state in strongly correlated electron systems.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Corrections
24 August, 2023
Correction: Equation (3) contained a typographical error and has been fixed.