No Arabic abstract
Topologically quantized response is one of the focal points of contemporary condensed matter physics. While it directly results in quantized response coefficients in quantum systems, there has been no notion of quantized response in classical systems thus far. This is because quantized response has always been connected to topology via linear response theory that assumes a quantum mechanical ground state. Yet, classical systems can carry arbitrarily amounts of energy in each mode, even while possessing the same number of measurable edge modes as their topological winding. In this work, we discover the totally new paradigm of quantized classical response, which is based on the spectral winding number in the complex spectral plane, rather than the winding of eigenstates in momentum space. Such quantized response is classical insofar as it applies to phenomenological non-Hermitian setting, arises from fundamental mathematical properties of the Greens function, and shows up in steady-state response, without invoking a conventional linear response theory. Specifically, the ratio of the change in one quantity depicting signal amplification to the variation in one imaginary flux-like parameter is found to display fascinating plateaus, with their quantized values given by the spectral winding numbers as the topological invariants.
We study three dimensional insulators with inversion symmetry, in which other point group symmetries, such as time reversal, are generically absent. Their band topology is found to be classified by the parities of occupied states at time reversal invariant momenta (TRIM parities), and by three Chern numbers. The TRIM parities of any insulator must satisfy a constraint: their product must be +1. The TRIM parities also constrain the Chern numbers modulo two. When the Chern numbers vanish, a magneto-electric response parameterized by theta is defined and is quantized to theta= 0, 2pi. Its value is entirely determined by the TRIM parities. These results may be useful in the search for magnetic topological insulators with large theta. A classification of inversion symmetric insulators is also given for general dimensions. An alternate geometrical derivation of our results is obtained by using the entanglement spectrum of the ground state wave-function.
The quasi-quantized Hall effect (QQHE) is the three-dimensional (3D) counterpart of the integer quantum Hall effect (QHE),exhibited only by two-dimensional (2D) electron systems. It has recently been observed in layered materials, consisting of stacks of weakly coupled 2D platelets that are yet characterized by a 3D anisotropic Fermi surface. However, it is predicted that the quasi-quantized 3D version of the 2D QHE should occur in a much broader class of bulk materials, regardless of the underlying crystal structure. Here, we compare the observation of quasi-quantized plateau-like features in the Hall conductivity of then-type bulk semiconductor InAs with the predictions for the 3D QQHE in presence of parabolic electron bands. InAs takes form of a cubic crystal without any low-dimensional substructure. The onset of the plateau-like feature in the Hall conductivity scales with $sqrt{2/3}k_{F}^{z}/pi$ in units of the conductance quantum and is accompanied by a Shubnikov-de Haas minimum in the longitudinal resistivity, consistent wit the results of calculations. This confirms the suggestion that the 3D QQHE may be a generic effect directly observable in materials with small Fermi surfaces, placed in sufficiently strong magnetic fields
We show how quantized transport can be realized in Floquet chains through encapsulation of a chiral or helical shift. The resulting transport is immutable rather than topological in the sense that it neither requires a band gap nor is affected by arbitrarily strong perturbations. Transport is still characterized by topological quantities but encapsulation of the shift prevents topological phase transitions. To explore immutable transport we introduce the concept of a shiftbox, explain the relevant topological quantities both for momentum-space dispersions and real-space transport, and study model systems of Floquet chains with strictly quantized chiral and helical transport. Natural platforms for the experimental investigation of these scenarios are photonic Floquet chains constructed in waveguide arrays, as well as topolectrical or mechanical systems.
We argue that closed string tachyons drive two spacetime topology changing transitions -- loss of genus in a Riemann surface and separation of a Riemann surface into two components. The tachyons of interest are localiz
We discuss the semiclassical and classical character of the dynamics of a single spin 1/2 coupled to a bath of noninteracting spins 1/2. On the semiclassical level, we extend our previous approach presented in D. Stanek, C. Raas, and G. S. Uhrig, Phys. Rev. B 88, 155305 (2013) by the explicit consideration of the conservation of the total spin. On the classical level, we compare the results of the classical equations of motions in absence and presence of an external field to the full quantum result obtained by density-matrix renormalization (DMRG). We show that for large bath sizes and not too low magnetic field the classical dynamics, averaged over Gaussian distributed initial spin vectors, agrees quantitatively with the quantum-mechanical one. This observation paves the way for an efficient approach for certain parameter regimes.