Quantum anomalous Hall effect in a flat band ferromagnet

Abstract

We proposed a theory of quantum anomalous Hall effect in a flat band ferromagnet on a two-dimensional decorated lattice with spin-orbit coupling. Free electrons on the lattice have dispersionless flat bands, and the ground state is highly degenerate when each lattice site is occupied averagely by one electron, i.e., the system is at half filling. The onsite Coulomb interaction can remove the degeneracy and give rise to the ferrimagnetism, which is the coexistence of the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic long-range orders. On the other hand, the spin-orbit coupling makes the band structure topologically nontrivial, and produces the quantum spin Hall effect with a pair of helical edge states around the system boundary. Based on the rigorous results for the Hubbard model, we found that the Coulomb interaction can provide an effective staggered potential and turn the quantum spin Hall phase into a quantum anomalous Hall phase. © 2012 American Physical Society.