No Arabic abstract
Geometrical phases, such as the Berry phase, have proven to be powerful concepts to understand numerous physical phenomena, from the precession of the Foucault pendulum to the quantum Hall effect and the existence of topological insulators. The Berry phase is generated by a quantity named Berry curvature, describing the local geometry of wave polarization relations and known to appear in the equations of motion of multi-component wave packets. Such a geometrical contribution in ray propagation of vectorial fields has been observed in condensed matter, optics and cold atoms physics. Here, we use a variational method with a vectorial Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) ansatz to derive ray tracing equations in geophysical waves and reveal the contribution of Berry curvature. We detail the case of shallow water wave packets and propose a new interpretation to the equatorial oscillation and the bending of rays in mid-latitude area. Our result shows a mismatch with the textbook scalar approach for ray tracing, by predicting a larger eastward velocity for Poincare wave packets. This work enlightens the role of wave polarizations geometry in various geophysical and astrophysical fluid waves, beyond the shallow water model.
Various Co2 based Heusler compounds are predicted to be Weyl materials. These systems with broken symmetry possess a large Berry curvature, and introduce exotic transport properties. The present study on epitaxially grown Co2TiSn films is an initial approach to understand and explore this possibility. The anomalous Hall effect in the well-ordered Co2TiSn films has been investigated both experimentally and theoretically. The measured Hall conductivity is in good agreement to the calculated Berry curvature. Small deviations between them are due to the influence of skew scattering on the Hall effect. From theoretical point of view, the main contribution to the anomalous Hall effect originates from slightly gapped nodal lines, due to a symmetry reduction induced by the magnetization. It has been found that only part of the nodal lines contributed near to the anomalous Hall conductivity at a fixed Fermi energy which can be explained from a magnetic symmetry analysis. Furthermore, from hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements, we establish the electronic structure in the film that is comparable to the theoretical density of states calculations. The present results provide deeper insight into the spintronics from the prospect of topology.
We construct a theory for the semiclassical dynamics of superconducting quasiparticles by following their wave-packet motion and reveal rich contents of Berry curvature effects in the phase-space spanned by position and momentum. These Berry curvatures are traced back to the characteristics of superconductivity, including the nontrivial momentum-space geometry of superconducting pairing, the real-space supercurrent, and the charge dipole of quasiparticles. The Berry-curvature effects strongly influence the spectroscopic and transport properties of superconductors, such as the local density of states and the thermal Hall conductivity. As a model illustration, we apply the theory to study the twisted bilayer graphene with a $d_{x^{2}+y^{2}}+id_{xy}$ superconducting gap function, and demonstrate Berry-curvature induced effects.
Even if a noninteracting system has zero Berry curvature everywhere in the Brillouin zone, it is possible to introduce interactions that stabilise a fractional Chern insulator. These interactions necessarily break time-reversal symmetry (either spontaneously or explicitly) and have the effect of altering the underlying band structure. We outline a number of ways in which this may be achieved, and show how similar interactions may also be used to create a (time-reversal symmetric) fractional topological insulator. While our approach is rigorous in the limit of long range interactions, we show numerically that even for short range interactions a fractional Chern insulator can be stabilised in a band with zero Berry curvature.
Recent advances in tuning electronic, magnetic, and topological properties of two-dimensional (2D) magnets have opened a new frontier in the study of quantum physics and promised exciting possibilities for future quantum technologies. In this study, we find that the dual-gate technology can well tune the electronic and topological properties of antiferromagnetic (AFM) even septuple-layer (SL) MnBi$_2$Te$_4$ thin films. Under an out-of-plane electric field that breaks $mathcal{PT}$ symmetry, the Berry curvature of the thin film could be engineered efficiently, resulting in a huge change of anomalous Hall (AH) signal. Beyond the critical electric field, the double-SL MnBi$_2$Te$_4$ thin film becomes a Chern insulator with a high Chern number of 3. We further demonstrate that such 2D material can be used as an AFM switch via electric-field control of the AH signal. These discoveries inspire the design of low-power memory prototype for future AFM spintronic applications.
In two-dimensional insulators with time-reversal (TR) symmetry, a nonzero local Berry curvature of low-energy massive Dirac fermions can give rise to nontrivial spin and charge responses, even though the integral of the Berry curvature over all occupied states is zero. In this work, we present a new effect induced by the electronic Berry curvature. By studying electron-phonon interactions in BaMnSb$_2$, a prototype two-dimensional Dirac material possessing two TR-related massive Dirac cones, we find that the nonzero local Berry curvature of electrons can induce a phonon angular momentum. The direction of this phonon angular momentum is locked to the phonon propagation direction, and thus we refer it as phonon helicity, in a way that is reminiscent of electron helicity in spin-orbit-coupled electronic systems. We discuss possible experimental probes of such phonon helicity.