Orbital Magnetization under an Electric Field and Orbital Magnetoelectric Polarizabilty for a Bilayer Chern System

TL;DR

This paper investigates how orbital magnetization and magnetoelectric polarizability behave in a bilayer Chern insulator under an electric field, emphasizing the importance of averaging methods and revealing the relationship with Berry curvature response.

Contribution

It demonstrates that only the whole sample average reliably calculates orbital magnetization under electric fields in Chern insulators and links magnetoelectric responses to Berry curvature dynamics.

Findings

Whole sample average is reliable for OM calculation under electric fields.

Nonzero Chern number causes gauge shifts in bulk average OM.

Stronger Berry curvature response enhances OMP and CSOMP.

Abstract

In the real space formalism of orbital magnetization (OM) for a Chern insulator without an external electric field, it is correct to average the local OM either over the bulk region or over the whole sample. However for a layered Chern insulator in an external electric field, which is directly related to the nontrivial nature of orbital magnetoelectric coupling, the role of boundaries remains ambiguous in this formalism. Based on a bilayer model with an adjustable Chern number at half filling, we numerically investigate the OM with the above two different average types under a nonzero perpendicular electric field. The result shows that in this case, the nonzero Chern number gives rise to a gauge shift of the OM with the bulk region average, while this gauge shift is absent for the OM with the whole sample average. This indicates that only the whole sample average is reliable to calculate the OM under a nonzero electric field for Chern insulators. On this basis, the orbital magnetoelectric polarizablity (OMP) and the Chern-Simons orbital magnetoelectric polarizablity (CSOMP) with the whole sample average are studied. We also present the relationship between the OMP (CSOMP) and the response of Berry curvature to the electric field. The stronger the response of Berry curvature to electric field, the stronger is the OMP (CSOMP). Besides clarify the calculation methods, our result also provides an effective method to enhance OMP and CSOMP of materials.