Impurity-induced current in a Chern insulator

Abstract

Chern insulators arguably provide the simplest examples of topological phases. They are characterized by a topological invariant and can be identified by the presence of protected edge states. In this article, we show that a local impurity in a Chern insulator induces a twofold response: bound states that carry a chiral current and a net current circulating around the impurity. This is a manifestation of broken time symmetry and persists even for an infinitesimal impurity potential. To illustrate this, we consider a Coulomb impurity in the Haldane model. Working in the low-energy long-wavelength limit, we show that an infinitesimal impurity strength suffices to create bound states. We find analytic wavefunctions for the bound states and show that they carry a circulating current. In contrast, in the case of a trivial analogue, graphene with a gap induced by a sublattice potential, bound states occur but carry no current. In the many body problem of the Haldane model at half-filling, we use a linear response approach to demonstrate a circulating current around the impurity. Impurity textures in insulators are generally expected to decay exponentially; in contrast, this current decays polynomially with distance from the impurity. Going beyond the Haldane model, we consider the case of coexisting trivial and non-trivial masses. We find that the impurity induces a local chiral current as long as time reversal symmetry is broken. However, the decay of this local current bears a signature of the overall topology - the current decays polynomially in a non-trivial system and exponentially in a trivial system. In all cases, our analytic results agree well with numerical tight-binding simulations.