Tilted Dirac cones and topological transitions in strained kagome lattices

Abstract

We study effects of strain on the electronic properties of the kagome lattice in a tight-binding formalism with spin-orbit coupling (SOC). The degeneracy at the $\Gamma$ point evolves into a pair of emergent tilted Dirac cones under uniaxial strain, where the anisotropy and tilting of the bands depend on the magnitude and direction of the strain field. SOC opens gaps at the emergent Dirac points, making the flatband topological, characterized by a nontrivial $\mathbb{Z}_2$ index. Strains of a few percent drive the system into trivial or topological phases. This confirms that moderate strain can be used to engineer anisotropic Dirac bands with tunable properties to study new phases in kagome lattices.