We study the noncommutative nonrelativistic quantum dynamics of a neutral particle, which possesses an electric qaudrupole moment, in the presence of an external magnetic field. First, by introducing a shift for the magnetic field, we give the Schrödinger equations in the presence of an external magnetic field both on a noncommutative space and a noncommutative phase space, respectively. Then by solving the Schrödinger equations both on a noncommutative space and a noncommutative phase space, we obtain quantum phases of the electric quadrupole moment, respectively. We demonstrate that these phases are geometric and dispersive.
The quantum mechanical position operators, and their products, are not well-defined in systems obeying periodic boundary conditions. Here we extend the work of Resta [Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 1800 (1998)], who developed a formalism to calculate the electronic polarization as an expectation value of a many-body operator, to include higher multipole moments, e.g., quadrupole and octupole. We define
nth-order multipole operators whose expectation values can be used to calculate the
nth multipole moment when all of the lower moments are vanishing (modulo a quantum). We show that changes in our operators are tied to flows of $n\ensuremath{-}1\mathrm{st}$ multipole currents, and encode the adiabatic evolution of the system in the presence of an $n\ensuremath{-}1\mathrm{st}$ gradient of the electric field. Finally, we test our operators on a set of tight-binding models to show that they correctly determine the phase diagrams of topological quadrupole and octupole models, capture an adiabatic quadrupole pump, and distinguish a bulk quadrupole moment from other mechanisms that generate corner charges.