Gauge nonlocality in planar quantum-coherent systems

Abstract

It is shown that a system with quantum coherence can be nontrivially affected by adjacent magnetic or adjacent time-varying electric field regions, with this proximity (or remote) influence having a gauge origin. This is implicit (although overlooked) in numerous works on extended systems with inhomogeneous magnetic fields (with either conventional or Dirac materials) but is generally plagued with an apparent gauge ambiguity. The origin of this annoying feature is explained and it is shown how it can be theoretically removed, leading to macroscopic quantizations (quantized Dirac monopoles, integral quantum Hall effect, quantized magnetoelectric phenomena in topological insulators). Apart however from serving as a theoretical probe of macroscopic quantizations, there are cases (experimental conditions, clarified here) when this "gauge nonlocality" does not really suffer from any ambiguity: an apparently innocent gauge transformation corresponds to real change in physics of a companion system in higher dimensionality, that leads to physical momentum transfers to our own system. This nonlocality, together with the associated "proximity" or remote effects are then real and lead to the remarkable possibility of inducing topological phenomena from outside our system (which always remains field-free and can even reside in simply-connected space). Specific procedures are then proposed to experimentally detect such types of nonlocal effects and exploit them for novel applications. General consequences in solid state physics (such as the first violation of Bloch theorem in a field-free quantum periodic system) are pointed out, and formal analogies with certain high energy physics phenomena (axions, θ-vacua and some types of Gribov ambiguities), as well as with certain largely unexplored phenomena in mechanics and in thermodynamics, are noted.