Quarter-filled Kitaev-Hubbard model: A quantum Hall state in an optical lattice

We analyze the physics of cold atoms in honeycomb optical lattices with on-site repulsion and spin-dependent hopping that breaks time-reversal symmetry. Such systems, at half filling and large on-site repulsion, have been proposed as a possible realization of the Kitaev model. The spin-dependent hopping breaks the spin degeneracy and, if strong enough, leads to four nonoverlapping bands in the noninteracting limit. These bands carry nonzero Chern number and therefore the noninteracting system has nonzero angular momentum and chiral edge states at 1/4 and 3/4 filling. We have investigated the effect of interactions on a quarter-filled system using the variational cluster perturbation theory and found that the critical spin-dependent hopping that separates the metal from the quantum Hall state is affected by interactions.