Equilibrium currents in chiral systems with non-zero Chern number

Abstract

We describe simple quantum-mechanical approach to calculating equilibrium particle current along the edge of a system with non-trivial band spectrum topology. The approach does not require any a priori knowledge of the band topology and, as a matter of fact, treats topological and non-topological contributions to the edge currents on the same footing. We illustrate its usefulness by demonstrating the existence of `topologically non-trivial' particle currents along the edges of three different physical systems: two-dimensional electron gas with spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman magnetic field, surface state of a topological insulator, and kagome antiferromagnet with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. We describe relation of our results to the notion of orbital magnetization.

8 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Observation of the Magnon Hall Effect
• Berry phase effect in anomalous thermoelectric transport
• Orbital magnetization in periodic insulators
• Quantum Theory of Orbital Magnetization and its Generalization to Interacting Systems
• Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya anisotropy and non-magnetic impurities in the $s=1/2$ kagome system ZnCu_3(OH)_6Cl_2

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Haydeeite: a spin-1/2 kagome ferromagnet
• Artificial Magnetic Fields in Momentum Space in Spin-Orbit Coupled Systems