Non-adiabatic extension of the Zak phase and charge pumping in the Rice--Mele model

TL;DR

This paper extends the concept of the Zak phase and topological charge pumping to include weak non-adiabatic effects using Landau--Zener transitions, revealing how non-adiabaticity influences topological properties in the Rice--Mele model.

Contribution

It introduces a non-adiabatic extension of the Zak phase and analyzes the breakdown of quantized charge pumping using Landau--Zener formalism in the Rice--Mele model.

Findings

Non-adiabatic effects cause deviations from quantized charge pumping.

The Landau--Zener transfer matrix effectively models non-adiabatic transitions.

Interference from the upper band affects the decay of the lower band population.

Abstract

In this study, the Landau--Zener (LZ) transition method is applied to investigate a weak non-adiabatic effect on the Zak phase and the topological charge pumping in the Rice--Mele model. The non-adiabatic effect is formulated using the LZ transfer matrix. The effective lower band wave function picks up the Stokes phase as well as the usual dynamical phase through two avoided crossings appearing in the two band instantaneous energy spectrum. The interference effect from the upper band has a decisive influence on the decay behavior of the lower band population. A non-adiabatic extension of the Zak phase can then be formulated, corresponding to the center of mass of the lower band Wannier function. Furthermore, we estimate the validity of the LZ formalism and verify the breakdown of the quantization of the topological charge pumping by changing the sweeping speed.