Designing Hamiltonians with Exactly Flat Higher-Vortexable Bands

arXiv:2610.20380 · cond-mat.mes-hall · Submitted 2026-10-14 · Read on arXiv

cond-mat.mes-hall

Submitted: 2026-10-14

Updated: 2026-10-14

Comments: 13 pages, 2 figures

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: The zero modes of the Aharonov-Casher Hamiltonian form an exactly flat, vortexable Chern band in any nonuniform magnetic field, analogous to the lowest Landau level.

Abstract

The zero modes of the Aharonov-Casher Hamiltonian form an exactly flat, vortexable Chern band in any nonuniform magnetic field, analogous to the lowest Landau level. We ask which local Hamiltonians host exactly flat higher-vortexable bands. For a scalar Hamiltonian, an exactly flat first-vortexable band requires a mass proportional to the local field; the Dirac analogue has the same structure. For periodic Bernal bilayer graphene with nonzero mean flux, the exact zero-mode pair is genuinely first-vortexable if and only if the interlayer hopping has nonzero mean; zero-mean hopping instead gives a decomposable pair. Multiorbital models yield exact higher-vortexable chains to arbitrary order, while remaining first order in momentum.

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