We review the proofs of a theorem of Bloch on the absence of macroscopic stationary currents in quantum systems. The standard proof shows that the current in 1D vanishes in the large volume limit under rather general conditions. In higher dimensions, the total current across a cross-section does not need to vanish in gapless systems but it does vanish in gapped systems. We focus on the latter claim and give a self-contained proof motivated by a recently introduced index for the many-body charge transport in quantum lattice systems having a conserved [Formula: see text]-charge.
We review the proofs of a theorem of Bloch on the absence of macroscopic stationary currents in quantum systems. The standard proof shows that the current in 1D vanishes in the large volume limit under rather general conditions. In higher dimensions, the total current across a cross-section does not need to vanish in gapless systems but it does vanish in gapped systems. We focus on the latter claim and give a self-contained proof motivated by a recently introduced index for the many-body charge transport in quantum lattice systems having a conserved [Formula: see text]-charge.
The Bloch theorem in ordinary quantum mechanics means the absence of the total electric current in equilibrium. In the present paper, we analyze the possibility that this theorem remains valid within quantum field theory relevant for the description of both high-energy physics and condensed matter physics phenomena. First of all, we prove that the total electric current in equilibrium is the topological invariant for the gapped fermions that are subject to periodical boundary conditions; i.e., it is robust to the smooth modification of such systems. This property remains valid when the interfermion interactions due to the exchange by bosonic excitations are taken into account perturbatively. We give the proof of this statement to all orders in perturbation theory. Thus, we prove the weak version of the Bloch theorem and conclude that the total current remains zero in any system, which is obtained by smooth modification of the one with the gapped charged fermions, periodical boundary conditions, and vanishing total electric current. We analyze several examples, in which the fermions are gapless. In some of them, the total electric current vanishes. At the same time, we propose the counterexamples of the equilibrium gapless systems, in which the total electric current is nonzero.
Abstract The Bloch theorem is a powerful theorem stating that the expectation value of the U(1) current operator averaged over the entire space vanishes in large quantum systems. The theorem applies to the ground state and to the thermal equilibrium at a finite temperature, irrespective of the details of the Hamiltonian as far as all terms in the Hamiltonian are finite ranged. In this work we present a simple yet rigorous proof for general lattice models. For large but finite systems, we find that both the discussion and the conclusion are sensitive to the boundary condition one assumes: under the periodic boundary condition, one can only prove that the current expectation value is inversely proportional to the linear dimension of the system, while the current expectation value completely vanishes before taking the thermodynamic limit when the open boundary condition is imposed. We also provide simple tight-binding models that clarify the limitation of the theorem in dimensions higher than one.
A long time ago, Bloch showed that in a system of interacting nonrelativistic particles the net particle-number current must vanish in any equilibrium state. Bloch's argument does not generalize easily to the energy current. We devise an alternative argument which proves the vanishing of the net energy currents in equilibrium states of lattice systems as well as systems of nonrelativistic particles with finite-range potential interactions. We discuss some applications of these results. In particular, we show that neither a one-dimensional (1D) lattice system nor a 1D system of nonrelativistic particles with finite-range potential interactions can flow to a conformal field theory with unequal left-moving and right-moving central charges.
The Bloch theorem is a general theorem restricting the persistent current associated with a conserved U(1) charge in a ground state or in a thermal equilibrium. It gives an upper bound of the magnitude of the current density, which is inversely proportional to the system size. In a recent paper, Else and Senthil applied the argument for the Bloch theorem to a generalized Gibbs ensemble, assuming the presence of an additional conserved charge, and predicted a nonzero current density in the nonthermal steady state [Else and Senthil, Phys. Rev. B 104, 205132 (2021)]. In this paper, we provide a complementary derivation based on the canonical ensemble, given that the additional charge is strictly conserved within the system by itself. Furthermore, using the example where the additional conserved charge is the momentum operator, we discuss that the persistent current tends to vanish when the system is in contact with an external momentum reservoir in the comoving frame of the reservoir.
We review some recent results from the mathematical theory of transport of charge and spin in gapped crystalline quantum systems. The emphasis will be on transport coefficients, such as conductivities and conductances. As for the former, those are computed as appropriate expectations of current operators in a non-equilibrium almost-stationary state (NEASS), which arises from the perturbation of an equilibrium state by an external electric field. While for charge transport the usual double-commutator Kubo formula is recovered (also beyond linear response), we obtain formulas for appropriately defined spin conductivities, which are still explicit but more involved. Certain “Kubo-like” terms in these formulas are also shown to agree with the corresponding contributions to the spin conductance. In addition to that, we employ similar techniques to show a new result, namely that even in systems with non-conserved spin, there is no generation of spin torque, that is, the spin torque operator has an expectation in the NEASS which vanishes faster than any power of the intensity of the perturbing field.
We prove that a recently derived correlation equality between conserved charges and their associated conserved currents for quantum systems far from equilibrium [O.A. Castro-Alvaredo, B. Doyon, and T. Yoshimura, Phys. Rev. X 6, 041065 (2016)], is valid under more general conditions than assumed so far. Similar correlation identities, which in generalized Gibbs ensembles give rise to a current symmetry somewhat reminiscent of the Onsager relations, turn out to hold also in the absence of translation invariance, for lattice models, and in any space dimension, and to imply a symmetry of the non-equilibrium linear response functions.