Anomalous Chern-Simons orbital magnetoelectric coupling of three-dimensional Chern insulators: gauge-discontinuity formalism and adiabatic pumping

Abstract

Chern-Simons orbital magnetoelectric (OME) coupling is usually the hallmark of nontrivial band topology in three-dimensional (3D) crystalline insulators. However, if a 3D insulator exhibits nonzero Chern number within any two-dimensional plane of the Brillouin zone, then traditionally the Chern-Simons coupling becomes ill defined for such 3D Chern insulators due to topological obstructions. In this work, by employing a ``gauge-discontinuity" formalism, we resolve this long-standing issue and rigorously derive a quantized layer-resolved OME response in 3D Chern insulators. We demonstrate that the difference of the layer-resolved OME coupling between adjacent layers is universally quantized in unit of $-C e^2/h$, where $C$ is the Chern number. This quantization arises from an anomalous contribution to the Chern-Simons OME coupling, which is closely associated with the Berry curvature of the occupied bands and the hybrid Wannier centers along the direction of the Chern vector $(0,0, C)$. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the anomalous Chern-Simons coupling can be transported by an exact integer quantum from one unit cell to its neighboring cell through an adiabatic cyclic pumping process, accompanied by a quantized displacement of Wannier center along the direction of the Chern vector. Our work provides a rigorous theoretical framework for understanding magnetoelectric response in 3D Chern insulators and opens avenues for designing topological quantum phenomena in layered systems.