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arXiv:2411.10909

Real space quantum metric of solids

Lucas A. Oliveira, Wei Chen

Published Nov 16, 2024• 0 citations
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Abstract

By acting the projector to the filled lattice eigenstates on a specific position, or applying local electron annihilation operator on the many-body ground state, one can construct a quantum state localized around a specific position in a solid. The overlap of two such local states at slightly different positions defines a quantum metric in real space, which manifests even in systems as simple as particles in a box. For continuous systems like electron gas, this metric weighted by the density gives the momentum variance of electrons, which is readily measurable by ARPES. The presence of disorder curves the real space manifold and gives rise to various differential geometrical quantities like Riemann tensor and Ricci scalar, indicating the possibility of engineering differential geometrical properties by disorder, as demonstrated by lattice models of 2D metals and topological insulators.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2411.10909

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By acting the projector to the filled lattice eigenstates on a specific position, or applying local electron annihilation operator on the many-body ground state, one can construct a quantum state localized around a specific position in a solid. The overlap of two such local states at slightly different positions defines a quantum metric in real space, which manifests even in systems as simple as particles in a box. For continuous systems like electron gas, this metric weighted by the density gives the momentum variance of electrons, which is readily measurable by ARPES. The presence of disorder curves the real space manifold and gives rise to various differential geometrical quantities like Riemann tensor and Ricci scalar, indicating the possibility of engineering differential geometrical properties by disorder, as demonstrated by lattice models of 2D metals and topological insulators.
By applying the projector to the filled lattice eigenstates on a specific position, or applying the local electron annihilation operator on the many-body ground state, one can construct a quantum state localized around a specific position in a solid. The overlap of two such local states at slightly different positions defines a quantum metric in real space, which manifests even in systems as simple as particles in a box. For continuous systems like electron gas, this metric weighted by the density gives the momentum variance of electrons, which is readily measurable by ARPES. The presence of disorder curves the real space manifold and gives rise to various differential geometrical quantities like Riemann tensor and Ricci scalar, indicating the possibility of engineering differential geometrical properties by disorder, as demonstrated by lattice models of 2D metals and topological insulators.
Momentum space of a gapped quantum system is a metric space: it admits a notion of distance reflecting properties of its quantum ground state. By using this quantum metric, we investigate geometric properties of momentum space. In particular, we introduce a nonlocal operator which represents distance square in real space and show that this corresponds to the Laplacian in curved momentum space, and also derive its path-integral representation in momentum space. The quantum metric itself measures the second cumulant of the position operator in real space, much like the Berry gauge potential measures the first cumulant or the electric polarization in real space. By using the nonlocal operator and the metric, we study some aspects of topological phases such as topological invariants, the cumulants and topological phase transitions. The effect of interactions to the momentum space geometry is also discussed.
The quantum geometry in the momentum space of semiconductors and insulators, described by the quantum metric of the valence-band Bloch state, has been an intriguing issue owing to its connection to various material properties. Because the Brillouin zone is periodic, the integration of quantum metric over momentum space represents an average distance between neighboring Bloch states, which we call the fidelity number. We show that this number can further be expressed in real space as a fidelity marker, which is a local quantity that can be calculated directly from diagonalizing the lattice Hamiltonian. A linear-response theory is further introduced to generalize the fidelity number and marker to finite temperature and moreover demonstrates that they can be measured from the global and local optical absorption power against linearly polarized light. In particular, the fidelity number spectral function in two-dimensional systems can be easily measured from the opacity of the material. Based on the divergence of quantum metric, a nonlocal fidelity marker is further introduced and postulated as a universal indicator of any quantum phase transitions provided the crystalline momentum remains a good quantum number, and it may be interpreted as a Wannier state correlation function. The ubiquity of these concepts is demonstrated for a variety of topological insulators and topological phase transitions in different dimensions.
Real-space interference of wave packets is governed by their central momentum separation and momentum width, which set the oscillation wavelength and spatial envelope, respectively. Here, we show that in crystalline systems, quantum metric distribution in an isolated band can similarly give rise to real-space interference through the evanescent tails of a localized bound state. The location and width of a quantum metric hot spot in the momentum space set a complex wavevector as one evanescent plane wave component of a bound state. Consequently, with multiple quantum metric hot spots, the density distribution of a bound state or the total density of two spatially overlapped bound states exhibits an interference pattern, where the oscillation period and long-range decay length are determined by the momentum-space separation of the hot spots and the width of the narrowest hot spots, respectively. This quantum-geometric interference is particularly pronounced in (nearly) flat bands, where competing scales from band dispersion are suppressed. Furthermore, we demonstrate that using a Josephson STM the real-space interference can be experimentally observed through the tip-position dependence of the Josephson critical current. Our results reveal a direct correspondence between momentum-space quantum geometry and real-space interference, showing how bound-state profiles encode the momentum-resolved quantum metric.
The past few years have seen a revived interest in quantum geometrical characterizations of band structures due to the rapid development of topological insulators and semi-metals. Although the metric tensor has been connected to many geometrical concepts for single bands, the exploration of these concepts to a multi-band paradigm still promises a new field of interest. Formally, multi-band systems, featuring in particular degeneracies, have been related to projective spaces, explaining also the success of relating quantum geometrical aspects of flat band systems, albeit usually in the single band picture. Here, we propose a different route involving Plücker embeddings to represent arbitrary classifying spaces, being the essential objects that encode allallall the relevant topology.This paradigm allows for the quantification of geometrical quantities directly in readily manageable vector spaces that a priori do not involve projectors or the need of flat band conditions. As a result, our findings are shown to pave the way for identifying new geometrical objects and defining metrics in arbitrary multi-band systems, especially beyond the single flatband limit, promising a versatile tool that can be applied in contexts that range from response theories to finding quantum volumes and bounds on superfluid densities as well as possible quantum computations.
The localization tensor is a measure of distinguishability between insulators and metals. This tensor is related to the quantum metric tensor associated with the occupied bands in momentum space. In two dimensions and in the thermodynamic limit, it defines a flat Riemannian metric over the twist-angle space, topologically a torus, which endows this space with a complex structure, described by a complex parameter $\ensuremath{\tau}$. It is shown that the latter is a physical observable related to the anisotropy of the system. The quantity $\ensuremath{\tau}$ and the Riemannian volume of the twist-angle space provide an invariant way to parametrize the flat quantum metric obtained in the thermodynamic limit. Moreover, if, by changing the couplings of the theory, the system undergoes quantum phase transitions in which the gap closes, the complex structure $\ensuremath{\tau}$ is still well defined, although the metric diverges (metallic state), and it is fixed by the form of the Hamiltonian near the gap closing points. The Riemannian volume is responsible for the divergence of the metric at the phase transition.