Orbital Magnetization Reveals Multiband Topology

TL;DR

This paper shows how orbital magnetization responses can reveal complex multiband topological invariants in electronic systems, providing a new way to identify topological phases through magnetization measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a method to deduce multiband topological invariants from orbital magnetization, combining energetic and quantum-geometric contributions, applicable to real materials like strontium ruthenate.

Findings

Orbital magnetization decomposes into energetic and quantum-geometric parts.

Multiband topological invariants can be identified from magnetization responses.

Application to strontium ruthenate suggests experimental verification.

Abstract

We demonstrate that nontrivial multiband topological invariants of electronic wavefunctions can be revealed through orbital magnetization responses to external magnetic fields. We find that decomposing orbital magnetization into energetic and quantum-geometric contributions allows one to deduce nontrivial multiband topology, provided knowledge of the energy spectrum. We showcase our findings in general effective models with multiband Euler topology. We moreover identify such multiband topological invariants in effective models of strontium ruthenate ($\text{Sr}_2 \text{Ru} \text{O}_4$), which may in principle be verified in the state-of-the-art doping-dependent magnetization measurements. Our reconstruction scheme for multiband invariants sheds a topological perspective on the multiorbital effects in materials realizing unconventional phenomenologies of orbital currents or multiband superconductivity.