| Topological Insulators and Nematic Phases from Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in 2D Fermi Systems with a Quadratic Band Crossing (2009) | |||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||
| We investigate the stability of a quadratic band-crossing point (QBCP) in 2D fermionic systems. At the non-interacting level, we show that a QBCP exists and is topologically stable for a Berry flux $\pm 2\pi$, if the point symmetry group has either fourfold or sixfold rotational symmetries. This putative topologically stable free-fermion QBCP is marginally unstable to {\em arbitrarily weak} short-range repulsive interactions. We consider both spinless and spin-1/2 fermions. Four possible ordered states result: a quantum anomalous Hall phase, a quantum spin Hall phase, a nematic phase, and a nematic-spin-nematic phase.. Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures | |||||||||
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