Engineering interaction-induced topological insulators in a $\sqrt{3} \times \sqrt{3}$ substrate-induced honeycomb superlattice

Abstract

We consider a system of spinless fermions on the honeycomb lattice with substrate-induced modulated electrostatic potentials tripling the unit cell. The resulting non-Abelian SU(2) gauge fields act cooperatively to realize a quadratic band crossing point (QBCP). Using a combination of mean-field theory and renormalization group techniques, we show that in the QBCP regime, arbitrarily weak repulsive electronic interactions drive the system into the quantum anomalous Hall state. This proves that substrate-induced local voltages are an effective knob to induce the spontaneous formation of a topological quantum phase.