We study the topological properties of a one-dimensional (1D) hardcore Bose-Fermi mixture using the exact diagonalization method. We firstly add a hardcore boson to a fermionic system and by examining the edge states we find that the quasi-particle manifests the topological properties of the system. Then we study a mixture with 7 fermions and 1 boson. We find that the mixture also exhibits topological properties and its behaviors are similar to that of the corresponding fermionic system. We present a qualitative explanation to understand such behaviors using the mapping between a hardcore boson and a spinless fermion. These results show the existence of topological properties in a 1D hardcore Bose-Fermi mixture and may be realized using cold atoms trapped in optical lattices experimentally.
The quantum spin Hall effect(QSHE) was first realized in HgTe quantum wells(QWs),which remain the only known two-dimensional topological insulator so far.In this paper,we have systematically studied the effect of the thickness fluctuation of HgTe QWs on the QSHE.We start with the case of constant mass with random distributions,and reveal that the disordered system can be well described by a virtual uniform QW with an effective mass when the number of components is small.When the number is infinite and corresponds to the real fluctuation,we find that the QSHE is not only robust,but also can be generated by relatively strong fluctuation.Our results imply that the thickness fluctuation does not cause backscattering,and the QSHE is robust to it.
We study a toy square-lattice model under a uniform magnetic field. Using the Landauer-Bttiker formula, we calculate the transport properties of the system on a two-terminal, a four-terminal and a six-terminal device. We find that the quantum spin Hall (QSH) effect appears in energy ranges where the spin-up and spin-down subsystems have different filling factors. We also study the robustness of the resulting QSH effect and find that it is robust when the Fermi levels of both spin subsystems are far away from the energy plateaus but is fragile when the Fermi level of any spin subsystem is near the energy plateaus. These results provide an example of the QSH effect with a physical origin other than time-reversal (TR) preserving spin-orbit coupling (SOC).
