Topological Lifshitz transition and novel edge states induced by non-Abelian SU(2) gauge field on bilayer honeycomb lattice

Abstract

We investigate the SU(2) gauge effects on bilayer honeycomb lattice thoroughly. We discover a topological Lifshitz transition induced by the non-Abelian gauge potential. Topological Lifshitz transitions are determined by topologies of Fermi surfaces in the momentum space. Fermi surface consists of N = 8 Dirac points at π-flux point instead of N = 4 in the trivial Abelian regimes. A local winding number is defined to classify the universality class of the gapless excitations. We also obtain the phase diagram of gauge fluxes by solving the secular equation. Furthermore, the novel edge states of biased bilayer nanoribbon with gauge fluxes are also investigated.