Interaction-mediated Co-existence of Altermagnetism and Topology

Abstract: We study an extended Hubbard model on Lieb lattice at electron filling 2 and 4, and demonstrate that the interactions lead to the simultaneous emergence of altermagnetic order and a topological gap. Using unrestricted Hartree-Fock theory, we evaluate both the altermagnetic and topological order parameters and show that they co-exist with an associated quantum spin Hall effect in a large region of the phase diagram, which we further support using exact diagonalization. Moreover, we demonstrate that inversion-symmetry breaking terms can also mediate second-order topological phases with associated corner modes.