Many-body effects in topological Kondo insulators

Abstract

We study the effect of interactions on the properties of a model 2D topological Kondo insulator phase. Loosely motivated by recent proposals where graphene is hybridized with impurity bands from heavy adatoms with partially filled d-shells, we introduce a model Hamiltonian which we believe captures the essential physics of the different competing phases. We show that there are generically three possible phases with different combinations of Kondo screening and magnetic order. Perhaps the most dramatic example of many-body physics in symmetry protected topological phases is the existence of the exotic edge states. We demonstrate that our mean field model contains a region with a time-reversal invariant bulk phase but where TR symmetry is spontaneously broken at the edge. Such a phase would not be possible in a non-interacting model. We also comment on the stability of this phase beyond mean field theory.