A Hamiltonian approach for obtaining irreducible projective representations and the k ⋅ p perturbation for anti-unitary symmetry groups

Abstract

As is known, the irreducible projective representations (Reps) of anti-unitary groups contain three different situations, namely, the real, the complex and quaternionic types with torsion number 1, 2, 4 respectively. This subtlety increases the complexity in obtaining irreducible projective Reps of anti-unitary groups. In the present work, a physical approach is introduced to derive the condition of irreducibility for projective Reps of anti-unitary groups. Then a practical procedure is provided to reduce an arbitrary projective Rep into direct sum of irreducible ones. The central idea is to construct a Hermitian Hamiltonian matrix which commutes with the representation of every group element g ∈ G, such that each of its eigenspaces forms an irreducible representation space of the group G. Thus the Rep is completely reduced in the eigenspaces of the Hamiltonian. This approach is applied in the k ⋅ p effective theory at the high symmetry points (HSPs) of the Brillouin zone for quasi-particle excitations in magnetic materials. After giving the criterion to judge the power of single-particle dispersion around an HSP, we then provide a systematic procedure to construct the k ⋅ p effective model.