Speaker: 

Anton Kapustin

Institution: 

Caltech

Time: 

Sunday, March 27, 2022 - 2:00pm to 3:00pm

Location: 

306

 

We study generalizations of the Berry phase for quantum lattice systems in arbitrary dimensions. For a smooth family of gapped ground states in d dimensions, we define a closed (d+2)-form on the parameter space which generalizes the curvature of the Berry connection. Its cohomology class is a topological invariant of the family. When the family is equivariant under the action of a compact Lie group G, topological invariants take values in the equivariant cohomology of the parameter space. These invariants unify and generalize the Hall conductance and the Thouless pump. A key role in these constructions is played by a certain differential graded Frechet-Lie algebra attached to any quantum lattice system. As a by-product, we describe ambiguities in charge densities and conserved currents for arbitrary lattice systems with rapidly decaying interactions.