Emerging topological bound states in Haldane model zigzag nanoribbons

Abstract

Zigzag nanoribbons hosting the Haldane Chern insulator model are considered. In this context, a reentrant topological phase, characterized by the emergence of quasi zero dimensional in-gap states, is discussed. The bound states, which reside in the gap opened by the hybridization of the counter-propagating edge modes of the Haldane phase, are localized at the ends of the strip and are found to be robust against on-site disorder. These findings are supported by the behavior of the Zak phase over the parameter space, which exhibits jumps of π in correspondence to the phase transitions between the trivial and the non-trivial phases. The effective mass inversion leading to the jumps in the Zak phase is interpreted in a low energy framework. Setups with non-uniform parameters also show topological bound states via the Jackiw-Rebbi mechanism. All the properties reported are shown to be extremely sensitive to the strip width.