Fractional Chern Insulators in Harper-Hofstadter Bands with Higher Chern Number

Abstract

The Harper-Hofstadter model provides a fractal spectrum containing topological bands of any integer Chern number, $C$. We study the many-body physics that is realized by interacting particles occupying Harper-Hofstadter bands with $|C|>1$. We formulate the predictions of Chern-Simons or composite fermion theory in terms of the filling factor, $\nu$, defined as the ratio of particle density to the number of single-particle states per unit area. We show that this theory predicts a series of fractional quantum Hall states with filling factors $\nu = r/(r|C| +1)$ for bosons, or $\nu = r/(2r|C| +1)$ for fermions. This series includes a bosonic integer quantum Hall state (bIQHE) in $|C|=2$ bands. We construct specific cases where a single band of the Harper-Hofstadter model is occupied. For these cases, we provide numerical evidence that several states in this series are realized as incompressible quantum liquids for bosons with contact interactions.