- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review Research

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Phase-space topology and spectral flow in screened magnetized plasmas

Xianhao Rao, Adil Yolbarsop*, Hong Li†, and Wandong Liu

  • *Contact author: adil0608@ustc.edu.cn; yolbarsop@gmail.com
  • †Contact author: honglee@ustc.edu.cn
PDF

Phys. Rev. Research 8, 023334 – Published 24 June, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/kfhx-hp37

Abstract

Topological wave phenomena in continuous media are fundamentally challenged by unbounded spectra and the absence of a compact Brillouin zone, which obstruct conventional bulk-interface formulations. We develop a unified phase-space framework for screened magnetized plasma based on a pseudo-Hermitian formulation with a positive-definite metric, enabling a generalized Schrödinger description and a Weyl-symbol analysis of the bulk generator. We show that the bulk Weyl symbol hosts isolated band degeneracies acting as Berry-Chern monopoles, including a higher-order spin-1 degeneracy with topological charge +2 that generically splits into two spin-12 Weyl points for finite kz. To characterize topology in this noncompact setting, we introduce a strip-gap Chern number associated with finite real-frequency strips of the spectrum of the phase-space symbol, extending band Chern topology to continuum systems. This invariant governs the spectral flow of interface modes induced by spatial variations of the magnetic field and establishes a bulk-interface correspondence at the level of phase-space symbols. By solving the interface eigenvalue problem, we demonstrate that the net spectral flow across the strip gap is determined by the enclosed monopole charge. We further show that this correspondence persists under weak collisional damping as long as the complex spectrum retains a finite real-part strip gap. Our results provide a systematic phase-space framework for topological wave transport in continuous media beyond compact-band and idealized Hermitian settings.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (31)

  1. M. Z. Hasan and C. L. Kane, Colloquium: Topological insulators, Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 3045 (2010).
  2. X.-L. Qi and S.-C. Zhang, Topological insulators and superconductors, Rev. Mod. Phys. 83, 1057 (2011).
  3. L. Lu, J. D. Joannopoulos, and M. Soljačić, Topological photonics, Nat. Photon. 8, 821 (2014).
  4. T. Ozawa, H. M. Price, A. Amo, N. Goldman, M. Hafezi, L. Lu, M. C. Rechtsman, D. Schuster, J. Simon, O. Zilberberg, et al., Topological photonics, Rev. Mod. Phys. 91, 015006 (2019).
  5. S. D. Huber, Topological mechanics, Nat. Phys. 12, 621 (2016).
  6. R. Süsstrunk and S. D. Huber, Observation of phononic helical edge states in a mechanical topological insulator, Science 349, 47 (2015).
  7. P. Delplace, J. Marston, and A. Venaille, Topological origin of equatorial waves, Science 358, 1075 (2017).
  8. G. M. Graf, H. Jud, and C. Tauber, Topology in shallow-water waves: A violation of bulk-edge correspondence, Commun. Math. Phys. 383, 731 (2021).
  9. Y. Fu and H. Qin, Topological phases and bulk-edge correspondence of magnetized cold plasmas, Nat. Commun. 12, 3924 (2021).
  10. J. B. Parker, J. Marston, S. M. Tobias, and Z. Zhu, Topological gaseous plasmon polariton in realistic plasma, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 195001 (2020).
  11. H. Qin and Y. Fu, Topological Langmuir-cyclotron wave, Sci. Adv. 9, eadd8041 (2023).
  12. X. Rao, A. Yolbarsop, H. Li, and W. Liu, Symmetry-driven bulk-edge correspondence in electron magnetofluids at finite temperature, Phys. Rev. Res. 7, 023315 (2025).
  13. F. D. M. Haldane, Model for a quantum Hall effect without Landau levels: Condensed-matter realization of the “parity anomaly”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 61, 2015 (1988).
  14. D. J. Thouless, M. Kohmoto, M. P. Nightingale, and M. den Nijs, Quantized Hall conductance in a two-dimensional periodic potential, Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 405 (1982).
  15. M. G. Silveirinha, Chern invariants for continuous media, Phys. Rev. B 92, 125153 (2015).
  16. N. Perez, A. Leclerc, G. Laibe, and P. Delplace, Topology of shallow-water waves on a rotating sphere, J. Fluid Mech. 1003, A35 (2025).
  17. G. M. Graf and M. Porta, Bulk-edge correspondence for two-dimensional topological insulators, Commun. Math. Phys. 324, 851 (2013).
  18. Y. Hatsugai, Chern number and edge states in the integer quantum Hall effect, Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 3697 (1993).
  19. K. Y. Bliokh, D. Leykam, M. Lein, and F. Nori, Topological non-Hermitian origin of surface Maxwell waves, Nat. Commun. 10, 580 (2019).
  20. A. Mesa Dame, H. Qin, E. Palmerduca, and Y. Fu, Wave topology in Hall magnetohydrodynamics, Phys. Rev. E 112, 045216 (2025).
  21. F. Faure, Manifestation of the topological index formula in quantum waves and geophysical waves, Ann. Henri Lebesgue 6, 449 (2023).
  22. L. Jezequel and P. Delplace, Mode-shell correspondence, a unifying theory in topological physics—Part I: Chiral number of zero-modes, SciPost Phys. 17, 060 (2023).
  23. J. Kellendonk, T. Richter, and H. Schulz-Baldes, Edge current channels and Chern numbers in the integer quantum Hall effect, Rev. Math. Phys. 14, 87 (2002).
  24. P. J. Morrison, Hamiltonian description of the ideal fluid, Rev. Mod. Phys. 70, 467 (1998).
  25. A. Mostafazadeh, Pseudo-Hermiticity versus PT symmetry: The necessary condition for the reality of the spectrum of a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, J. Math. Phys. 43, 205 (2002).
  26. E. Wigner, On the quantum correction for thermodynamic equilibrium, Phys. Rev. 40, 749 (1932).
  27. R. G. Littlejohn, The semiclassical evolution of wave packets, Phys. Rep. 138, 193 (1986).
  28. Z. Gong, Y. Ashida, K. Kawabata, K. Takasan, S. Higashikawa, and M. Ueda, Topological phases of non-Hermitian systems, Phys. Rev. X 8, 031079 (2018).
  29. K. Kawabata, K. Shiozaki, M. Ueda, and M. Sato, Symmetry and topology in non-Hermitian physics, Phys. Rev. X 9, 041015 (2019).
  30. D. Jin, L. Lu, Z. Wang, C. Fang, J. D. Joannopoulos, M. Soljačić, L. Fu, and N. X. Fang, Topological magnetoplasmon, Nat. Commun. 7, 13486 (2016).
  31. X. Rao, Code and data for: “Phase-space topology and spectral flow in screened-magnetized-plasma-topology”, Zenodo, 2026, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20634367.

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Research 8, 023334– Published 24 June, 2026
  • Received 12 February 2026
  • Accepted 10 June 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation