Orbital analogue of quantum anomalous Hall effect in $p$-band systems

Congjun Wu

Published 2008-05-22Version 1

We investigate the topological insulating states of the $p$-band systems in optical lattices induced by the onsite orbital angular momentum polarization, which exhibit gapless edge modes in the absence of Landau levels. This effect arises from the energy level splitting between the onsite $p_x+ip_y$ and $p_x-ip_y$ orbitals by rotating each optical lattice site around its own center. At large rotation angular velocities, this model naturally reduces to two copies of Haldane's quantum Hall model without Landau levels. The distribution of Berry curvature in the momentum space and the quantized Chern numbers are calculated. The experimental realization is also discussed.