Quantum-geometry stabilization of dilute fractional Chern insulators

Abstract

Fractional Chern insulators have attracted broad interest as lattice analogs of fractional quantum Hall states without Landau levels. However, low-filling fractional Chern insulators are fragile because charge-ordered phases can compete strongly with the fractional topological liquid. Here, we propose a center-decorated kagome model, motivated by geometry-tunable artificial lattices, in which the center-site hopping $t_2$ provides a direct knob for the quantum geometry of an isolated $C=1$ flat band. Here quantum geometry refers to the Berry curvature and Fubini--Study metric, which determine the form factors of interactions projected into the Chern band. Exact diagonalization shows that tuning $t_2$ away from the flatness-optimized kagome limit reduces the trace-condition deviation, suppresses competing charge order, and enhances the many-body stability at both $ν=1/3$ and the more fragile $ν=1/5$ filling. At $ν=1/5$, this stability-enhanced window persists under nearby interaction profiles, including variations of the dominant third-neighbor repulsion and weak nearest-neighbor admixtures. Low-energy spectra, spectral flow, quasihole and entanglement counting, static structure factors, and the quantized total many-body Chern number $C_{\mathrm{tot}}=1$ consistently support Laughlin-like fractional Chern insulators. These results identify quantum-geometry engineering as a route to stabilizing dilute fractional Chern insulators beyond band-flatness optimization alone.