Persistent Haldane phase in carbon tetris chains

Abstract

We introduce the concept of “tetris chains,” which are linear arrays of four-site molecules that differ by their intermolecular hopping geometry. We investigate the fermionic symmetry-protected topological Haldane phase in these systems using Hubbard-type models. The topological phase diagrams can be understood via different competing limits and mechanisms: strong coupling U≫t, weak coupling U≪t, and the weak intermolecular hopping limit t′≪t. Our particular focus is on two tetris chains that are of experimental relevance. First, we show that a “Y-chain” of coarse-grained nanographene molecules (triangulenes) is robustly in the Haldane phase in the whole t′−U plane due to the cooperative nature of the three limits. Secondly, we study a near-homogeneous “Y′-chain” that is closely related to the electronic model for poly(p-phenylene vinylene). In the latter case, the above mechanisms compete, but the Haldane phase manifests robustly and is stable when long-ranged Pariser-Parr-Popple interactions are added. The site-edged Hubbard ladder can also be viewed as a tetris chain, which gives a very general perspective on the emergence of its fermionic Haldane phase. Our numerical results are obtained by large-scale, SU(2)-symmetric tensor network calculations. We employ the density-matrix-renormalization group as well as the variational uniform matrix-product state (VUMPS) algorithms for finite and infinite systems, respectively. The numerics are supplemented by analytical calculations of the band-structure winding number. Published by the American Physical Society 2025