Berry Phase and Topological Effects of Phonons

Abstract

Phonons as collective excitations of lattice vibrations are the main heat carriers in solids. Tremendous effort has been devoted to investigate phonons and related properties, giving rise to an intriguing field of phononics, which is of great importance to many practical applications, including heat dissipation, thermal barrier coating, thermoelectrics and thermal control devices. Meanwhile, the research of topology-related physics, awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics, has led to discoveries of various exotic quantum states of matter, including the quantum (anomalous/spin) Hall [Q(A/S)H] effects, topological insulators/semimetals and topological superconductors. An emerging research field is to bring topological concepts for a new paradigm phononics---"topological phononics". In this Perspective, we will briefly introduce this emerging field and discuss the use of novel quantum degrees of freedom like the Berry phase and topology for manipulating phonons in unprecedentedly new ways.

Accepted by National Science Review (2017)

References in corpus (2)

• Observation of phononic helical edge states in a mechanical 'topological insulator'
• Topological Nature of the Phonon Hall Effect

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Pseudospins and topological effects of phonons in a Kekule lattice
• Chiral phonons in honeycomb sublattice of layered CoSn-like compounds
• Coexistence of zero-, one- and two-dimensional degeneracy in tetragonal SnO${}_2$ phonons
• Dirac phonons in two-dimensional materials
• Topology of Triple-Point Metals
• All hourglass bosonic excitations in the 1651 magnetic space groups and 528 magnetic layer groups
• Coexistent topological and chiral phonons in chiral RhGe: An ab initio study
• Discrete time crystal made of topological edge magnons
• Phonon pseudoangular momentum in $\alpha$-MoO${}_3$
• Inherited Berry curvature of phonons in Dirac materials with time-reversal symmetry