Equilibrium currents in chiral systems with non-zero Chern number
Abstract
We describe simple quantum-mechanical approach to calculating equilibrium particle current along the edge of a system with non-trivial band spectrum topology. The approach does not require any a priori knowledge of the band topology and, as a matter of fact, treats topological and non-topological contributions to the edge currents on the same footing. We illustrate its usefulness by demonstrating the existence of `topologically non-trivial' particle currents along the edges of three different physical systems: two-dimensional electron gas with spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman magnetic field, surface state of a topological insulator, and kagome antiferromagnet with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. We describe relation of our results to the notion of orbital magnetization.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1404.7535,
title = {Equilibrium currents in chiral systems with non-zero Chern number},
author = {E. G. Mishchenko and O. A. Starykh},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1404.7535},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
8 pages, 4 figures