Conductivity of Dirac fermions with phonon induced topological crossover

Abstract

We study the Hall conductivity in single layer gapped Dirac fermion materials including coupling to a phonon field, which not only modifies the quasi-particle dynamics through the usual self-energy term but also renormalizes directly the gap. Consequently the Berry curvature is modified. As the temperature is increased the sign of the renormalized gap can change and the material can cross over from a band insulator to a topological insulator at higher temperature (T). The effective Chern numbers defined for valley and spin Hall conductivity show a rich phase diagram with increasing temperature. While the spin and valley DC Hall conductivity is no longer quantized at elevated temperature a change in sign with increasing T is a clear indication of a topological crossover. The chirality of the circularly polarized light which is dominantly absorbed by a particular valley can change with temperature as a result of a topological crossover.