paper

Dissipationless Phonon Hall Viscosity

arXiv:1109.5648 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.85.245107

Abstract

We study the acoustic phonon response of crystals hosting a gapped time-reversal symmetry breaking electronic state. The phonon effective action can in general acquire a dissipationless "Hall" viscosity, which is determined by the adiabatic Berry curvature of the electron wave function. This Hall viscosity endows the system with a characteristic frequency, ω_v; for acoustic phonons of frequency ω, it shifts the phonon spectrum by an amount of order (ω/ω_v)^2 and it mixes the longitudinal and transverse acoustic phonons with a relative amplitude ratio of ω/ω_v and with a phase shift of +/- π/2, to lowest order in ω/ω_v. We study several examples, including the integer quantum Hall states, the quantum anomalous Hall state in Hg_{1-y}Mn_{y}Te quantum wells, and a mean-field model for p_x + i p_y superconductors. We discuss situations in which the acoustic phonon response is directly related to the gravitational response, for which striking predictions have been made. When the electron-phonon system is viewed as a whole, this provides an example where measurements of Goldstone modes may serve as a probe of adiabatic curvature of the wave function of the gapped sector of a system.

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