Topological Properties of τ-Type Organic Conductors with a Checkerboard Lattice

Abstract: Although the topological phases are difficult to be realized in organic molecular crystals, we demonstrate here that they can emerge in the \tau-type organic layered conductors, \tau-(EDO-S,S-DMEDT-TTF)2X{1+y} and \tau-(P-S,S-DMEDT-TTF)2X{1+y} (X=AuBr_2, I_3, IBr_2), where EDO-S,S-DMEDT-TTF and P-S,S-DMEDT-TTF denote the planar donor molecules ethylenedioxy-S,S-dimethyl(ethylenedithio)tetrathiafulvalene and pyrazino-S,S-dimethyl(ethylenedithio)tetrathiafulvalene, respectively. The conducting layers of these conductors have a highly symmetric checkerboard structure, which can be regarded as a modified Mielke lattice. Because their electronic structure inherits that of the Mielke lattice, their conduction and valence bands exhibits the quadratic band touching. The contact point splits into a pair of Dirac cones under uniaxial strain which breaks C_4-symmetry. In \tau-type conductors, we can expect rather large spin-orbit coupling (SOC) as organic conductors. We show that the SOC in this case opens a topologically nontrivial gap at the band contact point, and the helical edge states exist in the gap. The actual \tau-type conductors could be regarded as heavily-doped topological insulators, which could exhibit finite spin Hall effect.