  The discovery of intriguing properties related to the Dirac states in
graphene has spurred huge interest in exploring its two-dimensional group-IV
counterparts, such as silicene, germanene, and stanene. However, these
materials have to be obtained via synthesizing on substrates with strong
interfacial interactions, which usually destroy their intrinsic
$\pi$($p_z$)-orbital Dirac states. Here we report a theoretical study on the
existence of Dirac states arising from the $p_{x,y}$ orbitals instead of $p_z$
orbitals in silicene on 4H-SiC(0001), which survive in spite of the strong
interfacial interactions. We also show that the exchange field together with
the spin-orbital coupling give rise to a detectable band gap of 1.3 meV. Berry
curvature calculations demonstrate the nontrivial topological nature of such
Dirac states with a Chern number $C = 2$, presenting the potential of realizing
quantum anomalous Hall effect for silicene on SiC(0001). Finally, we construct
a minimal effective model to capture the low-energy physics of this system.
This finding is expected to be also applicable to germanene and stanene, and
imply great application potentials in nanoelectronics.
