Hofstadter Model and its Topology(Julia Version)

# Hofstadter Model and its Topology(Julia Version)¶

Jia-Qi Cai

Huazhong University of science and Technology, Wuhan

Email: caidish@uw.edu

In [56]:
#import essential package
using LinearAlgebra, Statistics, Compat, Plots, LaTeXStrings, SparseArrays


In this notebook, we show how to use Julia to simulate quantum Hall effect. We mainly focus on Hofstadter model, the Hamiltonian of which is simply: $$H = \sum_{m,n} – t(c^\dagger_{m+1,n}c_{m,n} + c_{m,n+1}^\dagger c_{m,n}e^{i 2\pi \Phi m} + h.c.)$$

## Energy Band¶

When the flux is commensurable, i.e, $\Phi = \frac{p}{q}$, the model have well difined Bloch excitation, which is band electron with $q$ bands. The eigen equations are: $$-2t\cos(k_x + 2\pi \Phi n)\psi_n – t(e^{-ik_y}\psi_{n-1} + e^{ik_y}\psi_{n+1}) = E_{k_x,k_y}\psi_n$$ where $n = 1,…,q$ and the boudary condition is $\psi_{j+q}= \psi_{j}$. Solving the linear system above will give the band structure of Hofstadter model

In [2]:
function TorusHamiltonian(kx,ky,t,p,q)::Array{Complex{Float64},2}
Phi   = p/q
diagL = -t*exp(-1*im*ky)*ones(q-1)
diagD = complex(-2*t*cos.(kx*ones(q) + 2*pi*Phi*collect(0:1:q-1)))
diagR = -t*exp(+1*im*ky)*ones(q-1)
H = convert(Array,Tridiagonal(diagL,diagD,diagR))
# We use the method Tridiagonal to setup the matrix, and convert it to normal
# matrix to define the boundary condition
H[q,1] = -t*exp(+1*im*ky)
H[1,q] = -t*exp(-1*im*ky)
# The bouandary condition is set.
return H
end;


Let’s try to use the Hamiltonian defined in the BZ (geometrically a torus) to generate the band.

In [3]:
p = 1
q = 6
t = 1
kx_step = 100
ky_step = 100
kx_list = LinRange(-pi/q,pi/q,kx_step)
ky_list = LinRange(-pi  ,pi  ,ky_step)

for (m,kx) = enumerate(kx_list)
for (n,ky) = enumerate(ky_list)
能带[n,m,:] = eigvals(TorusHamiltonian(kx,ky,t,p,q))
end
end
#result = permutedims(result,(2,1,3))

plot(ky_list,能带,legend=false,xlabel = L"k_y",ylabel = L"\frac{E}{t}")

Out[3]: