Interacting weak topological insulators and their transition to Dirac semimetal phases.

Topological insulators in the presence of a strong Coulomb interaction constitute novel phases of matter. Transitions between these phases can be driven by single-particle or many-body effects. On the basis of ab initio calculations, we identify a concrete material, i.e., Ca2PtO4, that turns out to be a hole-doped weak topological insulator. Interestingly, the Pt d orbitals in this material are relevant for the band inversion that gives rise to the topological phase. Therefore, Coulomb interactions should be of importance in Ca2PtO4. To study the influence of interactions on the weak topological insulating phase, we look at a toy model corresponding to a layer-stacked three-dimensional version of the Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang model with local interactions. For a low to intermediate interaction strength, we discover novel interaction-driven topological phase transitions between the weak topological insulator and two Dirac semimetal phases. The latter correspond to gapless topological phases. For strong interactions, the system eventually becomes a Mott insulator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]