Orbital magnetization in periodic insulators
Loading...
Date
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Description
Working in the Wannier representation, we derive an expression for the orbital magnetization of a periodic insulator. The magnetization is shown to be comprised of two contributions, an obvious one associated with the internal circulation of bulk-like Wannier functions in the interior, and an unexpected one arising from net currents carried by Wannier functions near the surface. Each contribution can be expressed as a bulk property in terms of Bloch functions in a gauge-invariant way. Our expression is verified by comparing numerical tight-binding calculations for finite and periodic samples.
submitted to PRL; signs corrected in Eqs. (11), (12), (19), and (20)
submitted to PRL; signs corrected in Eqs. (11), (12), (19), and (20)