• Accepted Paper

Band structure and ℤ2 invariants using the periodic four-component Dirac-Coulomb-Breit Hamiltonian in Dirac-Hartree-Fock

Luca Murg, Christopher Lane, and Roxanne M. Tutchton

Phys. Rev. Materials - Accepted 5 November, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/7pjk-lzbr

Abstract

Four-component Dirac–Hartree–Fock (DHF) theory provides a direct framework for treating relativistic effects arising from both one-body and two-body interactions. The one-body Dirac term includes scalar relativity and one-electron spin–orbit coupling, while the relativistic two-electron operator introduces additional scalar-relativistic, spin–orbit, spin–spin, and retardation effects through the Coulomb, Gaunt, and gauge terms. Here, we extend non-periodic DHF to periodic systems by deriving and implementing Kramers-unrestricted DHF with the Dirac–Coulomb (DC), Dirac–Coulomb–Gaunt (DCG), and Dirac–Coulomb–Breit (DCB) Hamiltonians. Applications to polymeric C, Si, Ge, and graphene demonstrate relativistic band-structure and topological calculations within this framework. For graphene, the Dirac-point gap increases from 19.1 μeV with DC-DHF to 43.8 and 43.9 μeV with DCG-DHF and DCB-DHF, respectively, while the Fu–Kane analysis yields a nontrivial ℤ₂ invariant, ν = 1. These results demonstrate the importance of both one-electron and two-electron relativistic effects in determining periodic electronic structure and establish a framework for their direct treatment in solid-state systems.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation

If the author has provided any supplemental materials with this article they will be available upon publication of the version of record.

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation