English

Non-Abelian Stokes theorem and quantized Berry flux

Materials Science 2022-09-30 v2 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Strongly Correlated Electrons High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Band topology of anomalous quantum Hall insulators can be precisely addressed by computing Chern numbers of constituent non-degenerate bands that describe quantized, Abelian Berry flux through two-dimensional Brillouin zone. Can Chern numbers be defined for SU(2)SU(2) Berry connection of two-fold degenerate bands of materials preserving space-inversion (P\mathcal{P}) and time-reversal (T\mathcal{T}) symmetries or combined PT\mathcal{PT} symmetry, without detailed knowledge of underlying basis? We affirmatively answer this question by employing a non-Abelian generalization of Stokes' theorem and describe a manifestly gauge-invariant method for computing magnitudes of quantized SU(2)SU(2) Berry flux (spin-Chern number) from eigenvalues of Wilson loops. The power of this method is elucidated by performing N\mathbb{N}-classification of \emph{ab initio} band structures of three-dimensional, Dirac materials. Our work outlines a unified framework for addressing first-order and higher-order topology of insulators and semimetals, without relying on detailed symmetry data.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2102.06207,
  title  = {Non-Abelian Stokes theorem and quantized Berry flux},
  author = {Alexander C. Tyner and Shouvik Sur and Qunfei Zhou and Danilo Puggioni and Pierre Darancet and James M. Rondinelli and Pallab Goswami},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.06207},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

17 pages, 11 figures; substantial revision of computational aspects; new data on ab initio band structure of Dirac materials

R2 v1 2026-06-23T23:04:54.818Z