2020/03/31 by Christian Tutschku, Jan Böttcher, René Meyer +1 · 11 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Anomaly (physics) #Effective mass (spring–mass system) #Graphene research and applications #Hall effect #Insulator (electricity) #Parity (physics) #Quantum #Quantum Hall effect #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum anomalous Hall effect #Topological Materials and Phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevresearch.2.033193
published in Physical Review Research 2(3) (American Physical Society)
openalex created_date 2020/03/13 · arxiv created 2020/07/16 · openalex publication_date 2020/08/04 · arxiv updated 2020/08/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
The Dirac mass of a two-dimensional QAH insulator is directly related to the parity anomaly of planar quantum electrodynamics, as shown initially by Rev. Lett. 51, 2077 (1983)]. In this work, we connect the additional momentum-dependent Newtonian mass term of a QAH insulator to the parity anomaly. We reveal that in the calculation of the effective action, before renormalization, the Newtonian mass acts similar to a parity-breaking element of a high-energy regularization scheme. This calculation allows us to derive the finite frequency correction to the DC Hall conductivity of a QAH insulator. We predict that the leading order AC correction contains a term proportional to the Chern number. This term originates from the Newtonian mass and can be measured via electrical or magneto-optical experiments. Moreover, we prove that the Newtonian mass significantly changes the resonance structure of the AC Hall conductivity in comparison to pure Dirac systems like graphene.