Chiral two-dimensional electron gas in a periodic magnetic field: Persistent current and quantized anomalous Hall effect

We study the energy spectrum and electronic properties of two-dimensional electron gas in a periodic magnetic field of zero average with symmetry of triangular lattice. We demonstrate how the structure of electron energy bands can be changed with the variation in the field strength so that we can start from nearly free-electron gas and then transform it continuously to a system of essentially localized chiral electron states. We find that the electrons near some minima of the effective potential are responsible for occurrence of dissipationless persistent currents creating a lattice of current contours. The topological properties of the electron energy bands are also varied with the intensity of periodic field. We calculated the topological Chern numbers of several lower-energy bands as a function of the field. The corresponding Hall conductivity is nonzero, and when the Fermi level lies in the gap, it is quantized.