Reply to "Comment on 'Piezoelectricity in planar boron nitride via a geometric phase'"

TL;DR

This paper defends the validity of its original findings on piezoelectricity in planar boron nitride against a comment claiming a mistake in the adiabatic process construction, reaffirming the correctness of their analytical approach.

Contribution

The authors clarify and justify their original methodology and results, countering claims of errors in their calculation of piezoelectric properties.

Findings

Their original analytical expression for piezoelectric constant remains valid.

The comment's alleged mistake is unwarranted and does not affect the results.

The physical soundness of their approach is reaffirmed.

Abstract

In relation to our original paper [M. Droth et al., Phys. Rev. B 94, 075404 (2016)], the Comment by Li et al. [Phys. Rev. B 98, 167403 (2018)] claims to have identified a "mistake in constructing the adiabatic process of the piezoelectricity". More specifically, they write that in our original work "the erroneous usage of the polarization difference formula in Eq. (4) leads to an invalid analytical expression of piezoelectric constant in Eq. (12) of Reference 1". We explain below why these and other minor claims in the Comment are unwarranted, and why we maintain that our result is correct and physically sound.