Existence and computation of generalized Wannier functions for non-periodic systems in two dimensions and higher

dc.contributor.author

Lu, Jianfeng

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Stubbs, Kevin D

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Watson, Alexander B

dc.date.accessioned

2020-04-01T21:53:57Z

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2020-04-01T21:53:57Z

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2020-04-01T21:53:56Z

dc.description.abstract

Exponentially-localized Wannier functions (ELWFs) are a basis of the Fermi projection of a material consisting of functions which decay exponentially fast away from their maxima. When the material is insulating and crystalline, conditions which guarantee existence of ELWFs in dimensions one, two, and three are well-known, and methods for constructing the ELWFs numerically are well-developed. We consider the case where the material is insulating but not necessarily crystalline, where much less is known. In one spatial dimension, Kivelson and Nenciu-Nenciu have proved ELWFs can be constructed as the eigenfunctions of a self-adjoint operator acting on the Fermi projection. In this work, we identify an assumption under which we can generalize the Kivelson-Nenciu-Nenciu result to two dimensions and higher. Under this assumption, we prove that ELWFs can be constructed as the eigenfunctions of a sequence of self-adjoint operators acting on the Fermi projection. We conjecture that the assumption we make is equivalent to vanishing of topological obstructions to the existence of ELWFs in the special case where the material is crystalline. We numerically verify that our construction yields ELWFs in various cases where our assumption holds and provide numerical evidence for our conjecture.

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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/20352

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math-ph

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math-ph

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cond-mat.mes-hall

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cs.NA

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math.MP

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math.NA

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physics.comp-ph

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Existence and computation of generalized Wannier functions for non-periodic systems in two dimensions and higher

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Journal article

duke.contributor.orcid

Lu, Jianfeng|0000-0001-6255-5165

duke.contributor.orcid

Stubbs, Kevin D|0000-0003-0062-5097

pubs.organisational-group

Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

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Chemistry

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Mathematics

pubs.organisational-group

Physics

pubs.organisational-group

Duke

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