Nonlocality and Strength of Interatomic Interactions Inducing the Topological Phonon Phase Transition

TL;DR

This study investigates how variations in interatomic force constants and nonlocal interactions can induce topological phase transitions in phonons of GaN and AlN, revealing the microscopic origins of Weyl phonons and their dependence on interatomic interactions.

Contribution

The paper quantitatively links phonon topology to real-space interatomic force constants using four analytical models, highlighting the dominant role of nonlocal interactions in topological phase transitions.

Findings

Nonlocal interactions significantly influence phonon topological phase transitions.

Changes in IFC strength can induce Weyl phonon band reversals.

AlN exhibits more topological phase variations than GaN due to its larger atomic neighborhood.

Abstract

Understanding the phonon behavior in semiconductors from a topological physics perspective provides more opportunities to uncover extraordinary physics related to phonon transport and electron-phonon interactions. While various kinds of topological phonons have been reported in different crystalline solids, their microscopic origin has not been quantitatively uncovered. In this work, four typical analytical interatomic force constant (IFC) models are employed for wurtzite GaN and AlN to help establish the relationships between phonon topology and real-space IFCs. In particular, various nearest neighbor IFCs, i.e., different levels of nonlocality, and IFC strength controlled by characteristic coefficients, can be achieved in these models. The results demonstrate that changes in the strength of both the IFCs and nonlocal interactions can induce phonon phase transitions in GaN and AlN, leading to the disappearance of existing Weyl phonons and the appearance of new Weyl phonons. These new Weyl phonons are the result of a band reversal and have a Chern number of 1. Most of them are located in the kz=0 plane in pairs, while some of them are inside or at the boundary of the irreducible Brillouin zone. Among the various Weyl points observed, certain ones remain identical in both materials, while others exhibit variability depending on the particular case. Compared to the strength of the IFC, nonlocal interactions show much more significant effects in inducing the topological phonon phase transition, especially in cases modeled by the IFC model and SW potential. The larger number of 3NN atoms provides more space for variations in the topological phonon phase of wurtzite AlN than in GaN, resulting in a greater abundance of changes in AlN.