Wilson-Loop-Ideal Bands and General Idealization

Abstract

Quantum geometry is universally bounded from below by Wilson-loop windings. In this work, we define an isolated set of bands to be Wilson-loop-ideal, if their quantum metric saturates the Wilson-loop lower bound. The definition naturally incorporates the known Chern-ideal and Euler-ideal bands, and allows us to define other types of ideal bands, such as Kane-Mele $Z_2$-ideal and inversion-fragile-ideal bands. In particular, we find that in the case of zero total Chern number, an isolated WL-ideal set of two bands with non-singular nonabelian Berry curvature and nontrivial normal Wilson-loop winding always admits a Chern-ideal gauge, without the need of a global good quantum number (such as spin). This enables the direct construction of new topologically ordered states, such as fractional topological insulator wavefunctions. We further propose a general framework of constructing monotonic flows that achieve Wilson-loop-ideal states starting from non-ideal bands through band mixing, where Wilson-loop-ideal states are not energy eigenstates but have smooth projectors similar to isolated bands. We apply the constructed flows to the realistic model of $3.89^\circ$ twisted bilayer MoTe$_2$, a moir\'e Rashba model and another moir\'e time-reversal-breaking models, and numerically find Chern-ideal, $Z_2$-ideal and inversion-fragile states, respectively, with relative error in the integrated quantum metric below $5\times 10^{-3}$. Our exact-diagonalization calculations on the numerically ideal states demonstrate the potential of our general definition of Wilson-loop-ideal bands and general procedure of constructing Wilson-loop-ideal states for future study of novel correlated physics.