Geometric mass acquisition via quantum metric: an effective band mass theorem for the helicity bands

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new effective band mass theorem incorporating quantum metric effects, revealing geometric mass enhancements in systems like spin-orbit coupled particles and Dirac fermions.

Contribution

It develops a comprehensive band mass theorem accounting for inter-band transitions and links the inter-band contribution to the quantum metric, with applications to various quantum systems.

Findings

Effective mass jumps to 2m₀ for Rashba coupling

Effective mass jumps to 3m₀ for Weyl coupling

Massless Dirac particles acquire a linear dispersing band mass

Abstract

By taking the virtual inter-band transitions along with the intra-band ones into full account, here we first propose an effective band mass theorem that is suitable for a wide-class of single-particle Hamiltonians exhibiting multiple energy bands. Then, for the special case of two-band systems, we show that the inter-band contribution to the effective band mass of a particle at a given quantum state is directly controlled by the quantum metric of the corresponding state. As an illustration, we consider a spin-orbit coupled spin-$1/2$ particle and calculate its effective band mass at the band minimum of the lower helicity band. Independent of the coupling strength, we find that the bare mass $m_0$ of the particle jumps to $2m_0$ for the Rashba and to $3m_0$ for the Weyl coupling. This geometric mass enhancement is a non-perturbative effect, uncovering the mystery behind the effective mass of the two-body bound states in the non-interacting limit. As a further illustration, we show that a massless Dirac particle acquires a linearly dispersing band mass (equivalent to the effective cyclotron one up to a prefactor) with its momentum through the same mechanism.