Quantum anomalous Hall state from spatially decaying interactions on the decorated honeycomb lattice

Abstract

Topological phases typically encode topology at the level of the single particle band structure. But a remarkable class of models shows that quantum anomalous Hall effects can be driven exclusively by interactions, while the parent non-interacting band structure is topologically trivial. Unfortunately, these models have so far relied on interactions that do not spatially decay and are therefore unphysical. We study a model of spinless fermions on a decorated honeycomb lattice. Using complementary methods, mean-field theory and exact diagonalization, we find a robust quantum anomalous Hall phase arising from spatially decaying interactions. Our finding paves the way for observing the quantum anomalous Hall effect driven entirely by interactions.