Flat-band ferromagnetism in a correlated topological insulator on a honeycomb lattice

Abstract

We study the flat-band ferromagnetic phase of a spinfull and time-reversal symmetric Haldane-Hubbard model on a honeycomb lattice within a bosonization formalism for flat-band Z$_2$ topological insulators. Such a study extend our previous one [L. S. G. Leite and R. L. Doretto, Phys. Rev. B {\bf 104}, 155129 (2021)] concerning the flat-band ferromagnetic phase of a correlated Chern insulator described by a Haldane-Hubbard model. We consider the topological Hubbard model at $1/4$ filling of its corresponding noninteracting limit and in the nearly flat band limit of its lower free-electronic bands. We show that it is possible to define boson operators associated with two distinct spin-flip excitations, one that changes (mixed-lattice excitations) and a second one that preserves (same-lattice excitations) the index related with the two triangular sublattices. Within the bosonization scheme, the fermionic model is mapped into an effective interacting boson model, whose quadratic term is considered at the harmonic approximation in order to determine the spin-wave excitation spectrum. For both mixed and same-lattice excitations, we find that the spin-wave spectrum is gapped and has two branches, with an energy gap between the lower and the upper bands at the $K$ and $K'$ points of the first Brillouin zone. Such a behavior is distinct from the one of the corresponding correlated Chern insulator, whose spin-wave spectrum has a Goldstone mode at the center of the first Brillouin zone and Dirac points at $K$ and $K'$ points. We also find some evidences that the spin-wave bands for the same-lattice excitations might be topologically nontrivial even in the completely flat band limit.