Hall conductance and topological invariant for open systems

The Hall conductivity given by the Kubo formula is a linear response of quantum transverse transport to a weak electric field. It has been intensively studied for quantum systems without decoherence, but it is barely explored for systems subject to decoherence. In this paper, we develop a formulism...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Shen, H. Z., Wang, W., Yi, X. X.
Format: Online
Language:English
Published: Nature Publishing Group 2014
Online Access:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4173040/
Description
Summary:The Hall conductivity given by the Kubo formula is a linear response of quantum transverse transport to a weak electric field. It has been intensively studied for quantum systems without decoherence, but it is barely explored for systems subject to decoherence. In this paper, we develop a formulism to deal with this issue for topological insulators. The Hall conductance of a topological insulator coupled to an environment is derived, the derivation is based on a linear response theory developed for open systems in this paper. As an application, the Hall conductance of a two-band topological insulator and a two-dimensional lattice is presented and discussed.