Topological Magnons: A Review

At sufficiently low temperatures, magnetic materials often enter correlated phases hosting collective, coherent magnetic excitations such as magnons or triplons. Drawing on the enormous progress on topological materials of the past few years, recent research has led to new insights into the geometry and topology of these magnetic excitations. Berry phases associated with magnetic dynamics can lead to observable consequences in heat and spin transport, whereas analogs of topological insulators and semimetals can arise within magnon band structures from natural magnetic couplings. Magnetic excitations offer a platform to explore the interplay of magnetic symmetries and topology, to drive topological transitions using magnetic fields; examine the effects of interactions on topological bands; and generate topologically protected spin currents at interfaces. In this review, we survey progress on all these topics, highlighting aspects of topological matter that are unique to magnon systems and the avenues yet to be fully investigated. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics, Volume 13 is March 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Coupled harmonic oscillators and their application in the dynamics of entanglement and the nonadiabatic Berry phases

In the dynamic description of physical systems, the two coupled harmonic oscillators time-dependent mass, angular frequency and coupling parameter are recognized as a good working example. We present in this work an analytical treatment with a numerical evaluation of the entanglement and the nonadiabatic Berry phases in the vacuum state. On the basis of an exact resolution of the wave function solution of the time-dependent Schr¨odinger’s equation (T DSE) using the Heisenberg picture approach, we derive the wave function of the two coupled harmonic oscillators. At the logarithmic scale, we derive the entanglement entropies and the temperature. We discuss the existence of the cyclical initial state (CIS) based on an instant Hamiltonian and we obtain the corresponding nonadiabatic Berry phases through a period T. Moreover, we extend the result to case of N coupled harmonic oscillators. We use the numerical calculation to follow the dynamic evolution of the entanglement in comparison to the time dependance of the nonadiabatic Berry phases and the time dependance of the temperature. For two coupled harmonic oscillators with time-independent mass and angular frequency, the nonadiabatic Berry phases present a very slight oscillations with the equivalent period as the period of the entanglement. A second model is composed of two coupled harmonic oscillators with angular frequency which change initially as well as lately. Here in, the entanglement and the temperature exhibit the same oscillatory behavior with exponential increase in temperature.

Quantum motion, coherent states and geometric phase of a generalized damped pendulum

In this work, we analyze the quantum dynamics of a generalized pendulum with a time-varying mass increasing exponentially and constant gravitation. By using Lewis–Riesenfeld invariant approach and Fock states, we solve the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for this system and write its solutions in terms of solutions of the Milne–Pinney equation. We also construct coherent states for the quantized pendulum and use both Fock and coherent states to investigate some important physical proprieties of the quantized pendulum such as eigenvalues of the angular displacement and momentum, their quantum variances as well as the respective uncertainty principle. Finally, we derive the geometric, dynamical and Berry phases for the time-dependent generalized pendulum.

Tidal surface states as fingerprints of non-Hermitian nodal knot metals

Non-Hermitian nodal knot metals (NKMs) contain intricate complex-valued energy bands which give rise to knotted exceptional loops and new topological surface states. We introduce a formalism that connects the algebraic, geometric, and topological aspects of these surface states with their parent knots. We also provide an optimized constructive ansatz for tight-binding models for non-Hermitian NKMs of arbitrary knot complexity and minimal hybridization range. Specifically, various representative non-Hermitian torus knots Hamiltonians are constructed in real-space, and their nodal topologies studied via winding numbers that avoid the explicit construction of generalized Brillouin zones. In particular, we identify the surface state boundaries as “tidal” intersections of the complex band structure in a marine landscape analogy. Beyond topological quantities based on Berry phases, we further find these tidal surface states to be intimately connected to the band vorticity and the layer structure of their dual Seifert surface, and as such provide a fingerprint for non-Hermitian NKMs.

Quantum eigenstates from classical Gibbs distributions

We discuss how the language of wave functions (state vectors) and associated non-commuting Hermitian operators naturally emerges from classical mechanics by applying the inverse Wigner-Weyl transform to the phase space probability distribution and observables. In this language, the Schr"odinger equation follows from the Liouville equation, with \hbarℏ now a free parameter. Classical stationary distributions can be represented as sums over stationary states with discrete (quantized) energies, where these states directly correspond to quantum eigenstates. Interestingly, it is now classical mechanics which allows for apparent negative probabilities to occupy eigenstates, dual to the negative probabilities in Wigner’s quasiprobability distribution. These negative probabilities are shown to disappear when allowing sufficient uncertainty in the classical distributions. We show that this correspondence is particularly pronounced for canonical Gibbs ensembles, where classical eigenstates satisfy an integral eigenvalue equation that reduces to the Schr"odinger equation in a saddle-point approximation controlled by the inverse temperature. We illustrate this correspondence by showing that some paradigmatic examples such as tunneling, band structures, Berry phases, Landau levels, level statistics and quantum eigenstates in chaotic potentials can be reproduced to a surprising precision from a classical Gibbs ensemble, without any reference to quantum mechanics and with all parameters (including \hbarℏ) on the order of unity.

The bulk-corner correspondence of time-reversal symmetric insulators

The topology of insulators is usually revealed through the presence of gapless boundary modes: this is the so-called bulk-boundary correspondence. However, the many-body wavefunction of a crystalline insulator is endowed with additional topological properties that do not yield surface spectral features, but manifest themselves as (fractional) quantized electronic charges localized at the crystal boundaries. Here, we formulate such bulk-corner correspondence for the physical relevant case of materials with time-reversal symmetry and spin-orbit coupling. To do so we develop partial real-space invariants that can be neither expressed in terms of Berry phases nor using symmetry-based indicators. These previously unknown crystalline invariants govern the (fractional) quantized corner charges both of isolated material structures and of heterostructures without gapless interface modes. We also show that the partial real-space invariants are able to detect all time-reversal symmetric topological phases of the recently discovered fragile type.