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arXiv:2507.12546

Space of conformal boundary conditions from the view of higher Berry phase: Flow of Berry curvature in parametrized BCFTs

Xueda Wen

Published Jul 16, 2025• 1 citation
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Abstract

In this work, we study the connection between two subjects: the space of conformal boundary conditions in boundary conformal field theories (BCFTs) and the space of gapped systems characterized by higher Berry phases. We explore this connection by analyzing multi-parameter spectral flow in Dirac fermion BCFTs with continuously parametrized conformal boundary conditions, which are introduced by coupling a CFT to a family of gapped systems. When the gapped systems belong to a nontrivial higher Berry class, the associated conformal boundary conditions induce a flow of the ordinary Berry curvature, resulting in a Chern number pump in the Fock space of the BCFT. This phenomenon is the BCFT analog of Berry curvature flow in one-dimensional parametrized gapped systems, where the flow occurs in real space. Building on this correspondence, we introduce the notions of higher Berry curvature and higher Berry invariants within the BCFT framework. Our results provide a new perspective for studying the topological properties of families of conformal boundary states and gapped ground states: if a family of gapped states belongs to a nontrivial higher Berry class, then the corresponding entanglement Hamiltonians exhibit a multi-parameter spectral flow that carries Berry curvature in the Fock space.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2507.12546

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In this work, we study the connection between two subjects: the space of conformal boundary conditions in boundary conformal field theories (BCFTs) and the space of gapped systems characterized by higher Berry phases. We explore this connection by analyzing multi-parameter spectral flow in Dirac fermion BCFTs with continuously parametrized conformal boundary conditions, which are introduced by coupling a CFT to a family of gapped systems. When the gapped systems belong to a nontrivial higher Berry class, the associated conformal boundary conditions induce a flow of the ordinary Berry curvature, resulting in a Chern number pump in the Fock space of the BCFT. This phenomenon is the BCFT analog of Berry curvature flow in one-dimensional parametrized gapped systems, where the flow occurs in real space. Building on this correspondence, we introduce the notions of higher Berry curvature and higher Berry invariants within the BCFT framework. Our results provide a new perspective for studying the topological properties of families of conformal boundary states and gapped ground states: if a family of gapped states belongs to a nontrivial higher Berry class, then the corresponding entanglement Hamiltonians exhibit a multi-parameter spectral flow that carries Berry curvature in the Fock space.
This paper is concerned with the physics of parametrized gapped quantum many-body systems, which can be viewed as a generalization of conventional topological phases of matter. In such systems, rather than considering a single Hamiltonian, one considers a family of Hamiltonians that depend continuously on some parameters. After discussing the notion of phases of parametrized systems, we formulate a bulk-boundary correspondence for an important bulk quantity, the Kapustin-Spodyneiko higher Berry curvature, first in one spatial dimension and then in arbitrary dimension. This clarifies the physical interpretation of the higher Berry curvature, which in one spatial dimension is a flow of (ordinary) Berry curvature. In ddd dimensions, the higher Berry curvature is a flow of $(d\ensuremath{-}1)$-dimensional higher Berry curvature. Based on this, we discuss one-dimensional systems that pump Chern number to/from spatial boundaries, resulting in anomalous boundary modes featuring isolated Weyl points. In higher dimensions, there are pumps of the analogous quantized invariants obtained by integrating the higher Berry curvature. We also discuss the consequences for parametrized systems of Kitaev's proposal that invertible phases are classified by a generalized cohomology theory, and emphasize the role of the suspension isomorphism in generating new examples of parametrized systems from known invertible phases. Finally, we present a pair of general quantum pumping constructions, based on physical pictures introduced by Kitaev, which take as input a ddd-dimensional parametrized system, and produce new (d+1)(d+1)(d+1)-dimensional parametrized systems. These constructions are useful for generating examples, and we conjecture that one of the constructions realizes the suspension isomorphism in a generalized cohomology theory of invertible phases.
We introduce the notion of higher Berry connection and curvature in the space of conformal boundary conditions in ( 1 + 1 ) d conformal field theories, related to each other by exactly marginal boundary deformations, forming a “boundary conformal manifold.” Our definition builds upon previous works on tensor networks, such as matrix product states, where the triple inner product or multiwavefunction overlap plays a key geometric role. On the one hand, our boundary conformal field theory formulation of higher Berry phase provides a new analytic tool to study families of invertible phases in condensed matter systems. On the other hand, it uncovers a new geometric structure on the moduli space of conformal boundary conditions, beyond the usual Riemannian structure defined through the Zamolodchikov metric. When the boundary conformal manifold has an interpretation as the position moduli space of a D-brane, our higher Berry connection coincides with the Neveu-Schwarz-Neveu-Schwarz (NS-NS) -field in string theory. The general definition does not require such an interpretation and is formulated purely field theoretically, in terms of correlation functions of boundary-condition-changing operators. We also explore a connection between higher Berry connections and functional Berry connections in the loop spaces of boundary conformal manifolds.
Higher Berry phase has recently been proposed to study the topology of the space of gapped many-body quantum systems. In this work, we develop a boundary-scattering approach to detect higher Berry phases in one-dimensional gapped free-fermion systems. By coupling a gapless lead to the gapped system, we demonstrate that the higher Berry invariant can be obtained by studying the higher winding number of the boundary reflection matrix. The resulting topological invariant is robust against perturbations such as disorder. Our approach establishes a connection between higher Berry invariants and transport properties, thereby providing a potentially experimentally accessible probe of parametrized topological phases.
We propose a systematic wave-function-based approach to construct topological invariants for families of lattice systems that are short-range entangled using local parameter spaces. This construction is particularly suitable when given a family of tensor networks that can be viewed as the ground states of ddd-dimensional lattice systems, for which we construct the closed (d+2)(d+2)(d+2)-form higher Berry curvature, which is a generalization of the well-known 2-form Berry curvature. Such (d+2)(d+2)(d+2)-form higher Berry curvature characterizes a flow of (d+1)(d+1)(d+1)-form higher Berry curvature in the system. Our construction is equally suitable for constructing other higher pumps, such as the (higher) Thouless pump in the presence of a global onsite U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1) symmetry, which corresponds to a closed ddd-form. The cohomology classes of such higher differential forms are topological invariants and are expected to be quantized for short-range entangled states. We illustrate our construction with exactly solvable lattice models that are in nontrivial higher Berry classes in d=2d=2d=2.
A family of finite-dimensional quantum systems with a nondegenerate ground state gives rise to a closed two-form on the parameter space, the curvature of the Berry connection. Its integral over a surface detects the presence of degeneracy points inside the volume enclosed by the surface. We seek generalizations of the Berry curvature to gapped many-body systems in DDD spatial dimensions which can detect gapless or degenerate points in the phase diagram of a system. Field theory predicts that in spatial dimension DDD the analog of the Berry curvature is a closed (D+2)(D+2)(D+2)-form on the parameter space (the Wess-Zumino-Witten form). We construct such closed forms for arbitrary families of gapped interacting lattice systems in all dimensions. We show that whenever the integral of the Wess-Zumino-Witten form over a (D+2)(D+2)(D+2)-dimensional surface in the parameter space is nonzero, there must be gapless edge modes for at least one value of the parameters. These edge modes arise even when the bulk system is in a trivial phase for all values of the parameters and are protected by the nontrivial topology of the phase diagram.
The moduli space of gapped Hamiltonians that are in the same topological phase is an intrinsic object that is associated with the topological order. The topology of these moduli spaces has been used recently in the construction of Floquet codes. We propose a systematical program to study the topology of these moduli spaces. In particular, we use effective field theory to study the cohomology classes of these spaces, which includes and generalizes the Berry phase. We discuss several applications for studying phase transitions. We show that a nontrivial family of gapped systems with the same topological order can protect isolated phase transitions in the phase diagram, and we argue that the phase transitions are characterized by screening of topological defects. We argue that the family of gapped systems obeys bulk-boundary correspondence. We show that a family of gapped systems in the bulk with the same topological order can rule out a family of gapped systems on the boundary with the topological order given by the topological boundary condition, constraining phase transitions on the boundary.