Proximity effects and a topological invariant in a Chern insulator connected to leads
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Abstract
The observed robustly quantized Hall conductance in quantum Hall systems and Chern insulators (CI) have so far been understood in terms of the topology of isolated systems, which are not coupled to leads. It is assumed that the leads act as inert reservoirs that simply supply/absorb electrons to/from the sample. Within a model of a CI coupled to leads with a cylindrical geometry, we show that this is not true. In the proximity of the CI, the edge current leaks into the leads, with the Hall conductance quantized only if this novel proximity effect is taken into account. For a special choice of leads, we identify the conductance with a topological invariant of the system, in terms of the winding number of the phase of the reflection coefficients of the scattering states.