Berry phase in quantum field theory: Diabolical points and boundary phenomena

Abstract

We study aspects of the Berry phase in gapped many-body quantum systems by means of effective field theory. Once the parameters are promoted to space-time-dependent background fields, such adiabatic phases are described by Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) and similar terms. In the presence of symmetries, there are also quantized invariants capturing generalized Thouless pumps. Consideration of these terms provides constraints on the phase diagram of many-body systems, implying the existence of gapless points in the phase diagram, which are stable for topological reasons. We describe such diabolical points, realized by free fermions and gauge theories in various dimensions, which act as sources of "higher Berry curvature" and are protected by the quantization of the corresponding WZW terms or Thouless pump terms. These are analogous to Weyl nodes in a semimetal band structure. We argue that in the presence of a boundary, there are boundary diabolical points—parameter values where the boundary gap closes—which occupy arcs ending at the bulk diabolical points. Thus the boundary has an "anomaly in the space of couplings" in the sense of [C. Cordova, D. S. Freed, H. T. Lam, and N. Seiberg, SciPost Phys. 8, 001 (2020) and SciPost Phys. 8, 002 (2020)]. Consideration of the topological effective action for the parameters also provides some new checks on conjectured infrared dualities and deconfined quantum criticality in 2+1d.

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