Coulomb-Engineered Topology*

The interplay of topology and interactions is at the heart of current condensed matter research. In particular, intensive efforts are being directed towards engineering artificial systems displaying topological excitations. Most of these efforts focus on single-particle properties neglecting possible engineering routes via the modifications to the fundamental many-body interactions. Here [1] we propose a simple platform in which topologically non-trivial many-body states emerge solely from dielectrically-engineered Coulomb interactions in an otherwise topologically trivial single-particle band structure. We demonstrate how our proposal can be realized in one-dimensional systems, such as quantum-dot chains, by exploiting Coulomb engineering, which has recently been applied to a variety of two-dimensional materials. Our results put forward Coulomb engineering as a powerful tool to create topological states of matter, with potential applications in a variety of solid-state platforms.

[1] Malte Rösner and Jose L. Lado, arXiv:2008.07990 (2020)