Scalar-spin-chirality-driven fractional Chern insulator on a kagome lattice

Abstract

Fractional Chern insulators (FCIs) are the lattice analogs of the fractional quantum Hall states, emerging even without an external magnetic field. In this work, we demonstrate the emergence of the FCI states in a kagome magnet with a noncoplanar magnetic order that induces a finite scalar spin chirality. By incorporating in our model both electron-electron interactions and the effect of band dispersion, we find that stronger interactions relative to the band dispersion stabilize the FCI state over a broader range of scalar spin chirality. We characterize the emergent FCI state by calculating overlap with representative states, identifying the ground-state degeneracy and the finite energy gap in the thermodynamic limit, and tracking the spectral flow under multiple flux-quantum insertions. Our results suggest that kagome magnets with scalar spin chirality can be promising platforms for realizing FCIs.