From Quasiperiodicity to a Complete Coloring of the Kohmoto Butterfly

Abstract

The spectra of the Kohmoto model give rise to a fractal phase diagram, known as the Kohmoto butterfly. The butterfly encapsulates the spectra of all periodic Kohmoto Hamiltonians, whose index invariants are sought after. Topological methods - such as Chern numbers - are ill defined due to the discontinuous potential, and hence fail to provide index invariants. This Letter overcomes that obstacle and provides a complete classification of the Kohmoto model indices. Our approach encodes the Kohmoto butterfly as a spectral tree graph, reflecting the quasiperiodic nature via the periodic spectra. This yields a complete coloring of the phase diagram and a new perspective on other spectral butterflies.