Multi-State Geometry of Density Matrices and Rectification Sum Rules

Abstract

The geometry of quantum states has emerged as a key ingredient in understanding the linear and nonlinear responses of quantum materials. To date, however, the connection between geometry and nonlinear response is best understood for clean, noninteracting systems at zero temperature. In this work, we develop a theory of multi-state geometry for density matrices and use it to derive sum rules for second-order rectification, making no assumptions about the strength of disorder or interactions. We first show that perturbation theory for thermal density matrices gives rise to two dual information-theoretic connections and an almost complex structure. We introduce a complex, quantum generalization of the Amari-Chentsov tensor of classical information theory, the cQAC tensor, which captures the multi-state geometry of the perturbed density matrix. We derive a zero-temperature sum rule for the frequency-integrated DC rectification response of an insulator as a difference between a ground state third cumulant and the complex distortion tensor, a multi-state geometric quantity built from the cQAC tensor. This generalizes known single-particle sum rules for the shift and nonlinear Hall currents to many-body systems and general perturbations. Specializing to the shift current, we resolve the geometric contribution for multiband insulators into particle-like and hole-like terms. We verify the sum rule numerically in a generalized Kane-Mele model, finding that the geometric contribution can dominate the integrated response. Finally, we show that although the splitting of the sum rule into cumulant and geometric contributions does not survive at nonzero temperature, the measured sum rule for insulators differs from its zero-temperature form by corrections exponentially small in the gap, allowing low-temperature rectification measurements to probe the multi-state geometry of insulators.