Spontaneous symmetry breaking of an interacting Chern insulator on a topological square lattice

The interplay between topology and correlation lies at the forefront of modern condensed matter physics. In this paper, we study the extended fermion-Hubbard model, including the on-site as well as the nearest-neighbor repulsive interactions, on a topological square lattice that supports the Chern insulator. Within the mean-field method, we find that the spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) charge-density wave or antiferromagnetic insulator dominates the system when the onsite or nearest-neighbor interactions are strong enough. It is interesting that the antiferromagnetic Chern insulator will appear in the phase diagram when there is an explicitly nonvanishing sublattice potential. In addition, we explore how a finite-size ribbon structure affects the phase diagram and point out that the critical interaction for SSB occurs with weaker strength than the bulk system.