Redistributing Chern numbers of Landau subbands: tight-binding electrons under staggered-modulated magnetic fields

Abstract

We investigate the magneto-transport properties of electrons on a square lattice under a magnetic field with the alternate flux strength $\phi\pm\Delta\phi$ in neighboring plaquettes. A new peculiar behavior of the Hall conductance has been found and is robust against weak disorder: if $\phi={p\over{2N}}\times{2\pi}$ ($p$ and $2N$ are coprime integers) is fixed, the Chern numbers of Landau subbands will be redistributed between neighboring pairs and hence the total quantized Hall conductance exhibits a direct transition by $\pm{N}e^2/h$ at critical fillings when $\Delta\phi$ is increased from 0 up to a critical value $\Delta\phi_c$. This effect can be an experimental probe of the staggered-flux phase.