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Interaction Driven Quantum Phase Transitions in Fractional Topological Insulators

We study two species of (or spin-1/2) fermions with short-range intra-species repulsion in the presence of opposite (effective) magnetic field, each at Landau level filling factor 1/3. In the absence of inter-species interaction, the ground state is simply two copies of the 1/3 Laughlin state, with opposite chirality, representing the fractional topological insulator (FTI) phase. We show this phase is stable against moderate inter-species interactions. However strong enough inter-species repulsion leads to phase separation, while strong enough inter-species attraction drives the system into a superfluid phase. We obtain the phase diagram through exact diagonalization calculations. The FTI-superfluid phase transition is shown to be in the (2+1)D XY universality class, using an appropriate Chern-Simons-Ginsburg-Landau effective field theory.