On the Electronic Contribution to Crystalline Diffraction Patterns

2025/08/29 by S. Allende, Allende, Sebastian, David Gálvez-Poblete +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) #Topological Materials and Phenomena

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2508.21752

openalex publication_date 2025/08/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We introduce the electronic structure factor as a phase-sensitive contribution to diffraction that directly encodes the properties of the occupied-band wave functions. In the one-dimensional SSH model, F_cond is governed by the relative sublattice phase, which integrates to the Zak phase. This provides a clear diffraction-based criterion to distinguish trivial and topological regimes in the absence of any structural change. Beyond the SSH limit, the same Bloch-based construction naturally accounts for commensurate and incommensurate magnetic satellites in antiferromagnets, reproducing the additional peaks at q=G± Q observed in NiO, MnO, chromium, and cuprates. These results demonstrate that diffraction can probe electronic topology and magnetic ordering on equal footing, opening a route to phase-sensitive structural characterization of correlated electron systems.

Citations

• A Short Course on Topological Insulators: Band Structure and Edge States in One and Two Dimensions
• Self-Consistent Equations Including Exchange and Correlation Effects
• The Fundamentals of Crystallography

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