Tunable geometric phase of Dirac fermions in a topological junction

Abstract

We predict a tunable and nonadiabatic Berry phase effect of Dirac fermions, which is an electronic analog of the Pancharatnam phase of polarized light. The Berry phase occurs as a scattering phase shift in a single scattering event of transmission or reflection of Dirac fermions at a junction with a spatially nonuniform mass gap, unveiling the topological aspects of scattering of chiral Dirac fermions. This geometric phase plays different roles in solids as compared with the Pancharatnam phase in optics. It provides a unique approach of detecting the Chern number of the insulator side in a metal-insulator junction of Dirac fermions, implying a different type of bulk-edge correspondence at the boundary between a metal and an insulator. This phase also modifies the quantization rule of Dirac fermions, suggesting geometric-phase devices with nontrivial charge and spin transport such as a topological waveguide and a topological transistor. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.87.165420