Anyonic Chern insulator in graphene induced by surface electromagnon vacuum fluctuations
Abstract
Sub-wavelength cavities have emerged as a promising platform to realize strong light-matter coupling in condensed matter systems. Previous studies are limited to dielectric sub-wavelength cavities, which preserve time-reversal symmetry. Here, we lift this constraint by proposing a cavity system based on magneto-electric materials, which host surface electromagnons with non-orthogonal electric field and magnetic field components. The quantum fluctuations of the surface electromagnons drive a nearby graphene monolayer into an anyonic Chern insulator, characterized by anyonic quasi-particles and a topological gap that decays polynomially with the graphene-substrate distance. Our work opens a path to controllably break time-reversal symmetry and induce exotic quantum states through cavity vacuum fluctuations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.10836,
title = {Anyonic Chern insulator in graphene induced by surface electromagnon vacuum fluctuations},
author = {Xinle Cheng and Emil Viñas Boström and Frank Y. Gao and Edoardo Baldini and Dante M. Kennes and Angel Rubio},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.10836},
year = {2025}
}