Open Momentum Space Method for Hofstadter Butterfly and the Quantized Lorentz Susceptibility
Abstract
We develop a generic open momentum space method for calculating the Hofstadter butterfly of both continuum (Moir\'e) models and tight-binding models, where the quasimomentum is directly substituted by the Landau level (LL) operators. By taking a LL cutoff (and a reciprocal lattice cutoff for continuum models), one obtains the Hofstadter butterfly with in-gap spectral flows. For continuum models such as the Moir\'e model for twisted bilayer graphene, our method gives a sparse Hamiltonian, making it much more efficient than existing methods. The spectral flows in the Hofstadter gaps can be understood as edge states on a momentum space boundary, from which one can determine the two integers () of a gap satisfying the Diophantine equation. The spectral flows can also be removed to obtain a clear Hofstadter butterfly. While is known as the Chern number, our theory identifies as a dual Chern number for the momentum space, which corresponds to a quantized Lorentz susceptibility .
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2102.04479,
title = {Open Momentum Space Method for Hofstadter Butterfly and the Quantized Lorentz Susceptibility},
author = {Biao Lian and Fang Xie and B. Andrei Bernevig},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.04479},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
5+30 pages, 3+4 figures