Scaling behavior of the insulator-to-plateau transition in a topological band model

Abstract

The scaling behavior of the quantum phase transition from an insulator to a quantum Hall plateau state has often been examined within systems realizing Landau levels. We study the topological transition in energy band models with nonzero Chern number, which have the same topological property as a Landau level. We find that the topological band generally realizes the same universality class as the integer quantum Hall system in magnetic field for strong enough disorder scattering. Furthermore, the symmetry of the transition characterized by the relations: $\sigma_{xy}(E)=1-\sigma_{xy}(-E)$ for the Hall conductance and $\sigma_{xx}(E)=\sigma_{xx}(-E)$ for the longitudinal conductance is observed near the transition region. We also establish that the finite temperature dependence of the Hall conductance is determined by the inelastic scattering relaxation time, while the localization exponent $\nu$ remains unchanged by such scattering.