Paper detail

Thin-Torus Limit of Fractional Topological Insulators

We analytically and numerically analyze the one-dimensional "thin-torus" limit of Fractional Topological Insulators in a series of simple models exhibiting exactly flat bands with local hopping. These models are the one-dimensional limit of two dimensional Chern Insulators, and the Hubbard-type interactions projected into their lowest band take particularly simple forms. By exactly solving the many-body interacting spectrum of these models, we show that, just like in the Fractional Quantum Hall effect, the zero modes of the thin-torus limit are CDW states of occupation numbers satisfying generalized Pauli principles. As opposed to the FQH where the thin-torus CDW appear in orbital space, in the thin-torus FCI states, the CDW states are in real-space. We show the counting of the quasihole excitations in the energy spectrum cannot distinguish between a CDW state and a FQH state. However, by exactly computing the entanglement spectrum for the thin-torus states, we show that it can qualitatively and quantitatively distinguish between a CDW and a fractional topological state such as the FCI. We then discover a previously unknown separation of energy scales of the full FQH energy spectrum in the thin torus limit and find that Chern insulator models exhibiting strong isotropic FCI states have a similar structure in their thin-torus limit spectrum. We close by numerically computing the evolution of energy and entanglement spectra from the thin-torus to the isotropic limit. Our results can also be interpreted as an analysis of one-body, 1-dimensional topological insulators stabilized by inversion symmetry in the presence of interactions.