Quantum spin Hall insulator on the honeycomb lattice induced by ferromagnetic exchange interaction

Abstract

We study the many-body instabilities of correlated electrons on the half-filled honeycomb lattice with enhanced exchange coupling. The system is described by an extended Hubbard model including the next-nearest-neighbor Coulomb repulsion (V2) and the nearest-neighbor exchange interaction (J). We use the truncated unity functional renormalization group approach to determine a schematic ground-state phase diagram with higher resolution in the parameter space of V2 and J. In the absence of the on-site repulsion and presence of sizable next-nearest-neighbor repulsion and enhanced nearest-neighbor exchange interaction, we encounter the quantum spin Hall phase, the spin-Kekulé phase, and the three-sublattice and the incommensurate charge-density-wave phases. We propose a scheme for combining consistently the truncated unity functional renormalization group and the mean-field approximation, which is distinct from the conventional one that directly uses the renormalization-group results as an input for the mean-field calculation. This scheme is used to study in detail the quantum spin Hall phase, presenting some characteristics like the bulk gap, the Chern number and the helical edge states.