Chern number and integer Hall conductivity 2026-10-18
For filled, separated, noninteracting magnetic Bloch bands, the Berry curvature integral over the magnetic Brillouin zone is an integer Chern number , giving . Patches of Berry connection meet through phases with integer windings; continuous gap-preserving changes cannot change . D. J. Thouless, M. Kohmoto, M. P. Nightingale and M. den Nijs developed this band argument; it does not establish the interacting fractional case.[ref]
Quantized Hall Conductance in a Two-Dimensional Periodic Potential by D. J. Thouless and others. pp. 405–407, Kubo formula and phase winding