Interacting fermions in two dimension in simultaneous presence of disorder and magnetic field

J Phys Condens Matter. 2022 Mar 29;34(21). doi: 10.1088/1361-648X/ac5d8a.

Abstract

We study the revival of Hofstadter butterfly due to the competition between disorder and electronic interaction using mean field approximation of unrestricted Hartree Fock method at zero temperature for two dimensional square and honeycomb lattices. Interplay of disorder and electronic correlation to nullify each other is corroborated by the fact that honeycomb lattice needs more strength of electronic correlation owing to its less co-ordination number which enhances the effect of disorder. The extent of revival of the butterfly is better in square lattice than honeycomb lattice due to higher coordination number. The effect of disorder and interaction is also investigated to study entanglement entropy and entanglement spectrum. We find that for honeycomb lattice area law of entanglement entropy is obeyed in all cases but for square lattice there is some departure from area law for larger subsystems. The entanglement spectrum have the reflection symmetry of the original butterfly of the Hofstadter spectrum. The interaction induces a gap in the entanglement spectrum as well conforming the correspondence between physical spectrum and entanglement spectrum. The effect of disorder closes the interaction induced gap in the entanglement spectrum establishing the nullification of interaction due to disorder and vice versa.

Keywords: Hofstadter effect; disorder and interaction; entanglement.