Double perovskite heterostructures: Magnetism, Chern bands, and Chern insulators

Abstract

Experiments demonstrating the controlled growth of oxide heterostructures have raised the prospect of realizing topologically nontrivial states of correlated electrons in low dimensions. Here, we study heterostructures consisting of {111}-bilayers of double perovskites separated by inert band insulators. In bulk, these double perovskites have well-defined local moments interacting with itinerant electrons leading to high temperature ferromagnetism. Incorporating spin-orbit coupling in the two-dimensional honeycomb geometry of a {111}-bilayer, we find a rich phase diagram with tunable ferromagnetic order, topological Chern bands, and a C=2 Chern insulator regime. An effective two-band model of Zeeman-split j=3/2 states captures this nontrivial band topology. Our results are of broad relevance to oxide materials such as Sr2FeMoO6, Ba2FeReO6, and Sr2CrWO6.