Temperature and Chemical Potential Dependence of the Parity Anomaly in Quantum Anomalous Hall Insulators

Understand

The low-energy physics of two-dimensional Quantum Anomalous Hall insulators like (Hg,Mn)Te quantum wells or magnetically doped (Bi,Sb)Te thin films can be effectively described by two Chern insulators, including a Dirac, as well as a momentum-dependent mass term.

• Each of those Chern insulators is directly related to the parity anomaly of planar quantum electrodynamics.
• In this work, we analyze the finite temperature Hall conductivity of a single Chern insulator in 2+1 space-time dimensions under the influence of a chemical potential and an out-of-plane magnetic field.
• At zero magnetic field, this non-dissipative transport coefficient originates from the parity anomaly of planar quantum electrodynamics.