Disorder-induced topological phase transitions on Lieb lattices

Abstract

Motivated by the very recent experimental realization of electronic Lieb lattices and research interest on topological states of matter, we study the topological phase transitions driven by Anderson disorder on spin-orbit coupled Lieb lattices in the presence of spin-independent and dependent potentials. By combining the numerical transport and self-consistent Born approximation methods, we found that both time-reversal invariant and broken Lieb lattices can host disorder-induced gapful topological phases, including the quantum spin Hall insulator (QSHI) and quantum anomalous Hall insulator (QAHI) phases. For the time-reversal invariant case, this disorder can induce a topological phase transition directly from normal insulator (NI) to the QSHI. While for the time-reversal broken case, the disorder can induce either a QAHI-QSHI phase transition or a NI-QAHI-QSHI phase transition. Remarkably, the time-reversal broken QSHI phase can be induced by Anderson disorder on the spin-orbit coupled Lieb lattices without time-reversal symmetry.