Relating the Hall conductivity to the many-body Chern number using Fermi's Golden rule and Kramers-Kronig relations

Abstract

This pedagogical piece provides a surprisingly simple demonstration that the quantized Hall conductivity of correlated insulators is given by the many-body Chern number, a topological invariant defined in the space of twisted boundary conditions. In contrast to conventional proofs, generally based on the Kubo formula, our approach entirely relies on combining Kramers-Kronig relations and Fermi's golden rule within a circular-dichroism framework. This pedagogical derivation illustrates how the Hall conductivity of correlated insulators can be determined by monitoring single-particle excitations upon a circular drive, a conceptually simple picture with direct implications for quantum-engineered systems, where excitation rates can be directly monitored.