Non-Abelian spin Hall insulator
Abstract
Motivated by a recent experiment reporting the fractional quantum spin Hall effect in twisted , we investigate microscopically the prospects of realizing exotic topologically ordered states beyond conventional quantum Hall physics. We show that a non-Abelian spin Hall insulator, a state of two copies of the non-Abelian Moore-Read state, can be stabilized at half filling of time-reversal conjugate Chern bands. We elucidate that the existence of this phase relies on the reduction of opposite-spin interactions at short distances to overcome the Ising ferromagnetism. Moreover, we demonstrate that band mixing provides a generic mechanism for this reduction to be achieved. Quite remarkably, we find that a renormalization of opposite-spin interactions at short distances as small as 15 % of the moir\'e period is sufficient for a direct transition to a completely spin unpolarized phase which supports the non-Abelian spin Hall insulator. Furthermore, we show that the non-Abelian spin Hall insulator can either break time-reversal symmetry or preserve it depending on the underlying topological order.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2406.14617,
title = {Non-Abelian spin Hall insulator},
author = {Ahmed Abouelkomsan and Liang Fu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.14617},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
10 pages, 7 figures, published version