Lindbladian Phase Geometry and Hall Transport in Open Bloch Systems

Abstract

Quantum geometry underlies a wide range of transport phenomena in Bloch systems. How quantum-geometric transport is modified when Bloch electrons are coupled to an environment, however, remains largely unexplored, even though the environment can alter both the electronic state and the physical current operator. Here we formulate dc linear response within a trace-preserving Lindblad kinetic theory by defining the physical velocity as the Liouvillian time derivative of the position operator. This construction reveals an environment-induced contribution to the current vertex whose momentum-space curl generates new Hall responses governed by the gauge-invariant phase geometry encoded by Lindblad jump amplitudes, which characterize electron-environment coupling. To leading order in the dissipative coupling, this geometry gives rise to interband shift-vector and diagonal-vorticity Hall responses arising from off-diagonal and diagonal jump amplitudes, respectively. Remarkably, both mechanisms can produce a finite Hall conductivity even when the conventional Berry-curvature anomalous Hall effect vanishes identically. Our work establishes Lindbladian phase geometry as an independent geometric origin of transverse transport in open quantum matter.