Exciton Berryology

TL;DR

This paper introduces a theoretical framework for defining and calculating exciton Berry phases in semiconductors, revealing their physical significance, quantization conditions, and implications for topological exciton states.

Contribution

It provides a novel gauge-invariant method to compute exciton Berry phases and polarization, extending topological analysis to excitons beyond single-particle band theory.

Findings

Defined exciton Berry connection and phases for different decompositions.

Derived a gauge-invariant expression for exciton polarization.

Showed quantization of exciton Berry phases under inversion and $C_2 \\mathcal{T}$ symmetry.

Abstract

In translationally invariant semiconductors that host exciton bound states, one can define an infinite number of possible exciton Berry connections. These correspond to the different ways in which a many-body exciton state, at fixed total momentum, can be decomposed into free electron and hole Bloch states that are entangled by an exciton envelope wave function. Inspired by the modern theory of polarization, we define an exciton projected position operator whose eigenvalues single out two unique choices of exciton Berry phase and associated Berry connection - one for electrons, and one for holes. We clarify the physical meaning of these exciton Berry phases and provide a discrete Wilson loop formulation that allows for their numerical calculation without a smooth gauge. As a corollary, we obtain a gauge-invariant expression for the exciton polarisation at a given total momentum, i.e. the mean separation of the electron and hole within the exciton wave function. In the presence of crystalline inversion symmetry, the electron and hole exciton Berry phases are quantized to the same value and we derive how this value can be expressed in terms of inversion eigenvalues of the many-body exciton state. We then consider $C_2 \mathcal{T}$ symmetry, for which no symmetry eigenvalues are available as it is anti-unitary, and confirm that the exciton Berry phase remains quantized and still diagnoses topologically distinct exciton bands. The notion of shift excitons, whose exciton Wannier states are displaced from those of the non-interacting bands by a quantized amount, can therefore be generalised beyond symmetry indicators.