Speaker
Description
The nonequilibrium generation of orbital magnetization under applied electric fields is a central problem in the emergent field of orbitronics. However, its theoretical description is challenging due to the ill-defined nature of the position operator under periodic boundary conditions. While the modern theory of orbital magnetization reformulates the problem in the Bloch representation, its generalization beyond equilibrium and the perfect (clean) crystal limit is yet to be fully developed. Here, we present a general-purpose real-space approach to nonequilibrium orbital magnetization, which does not rely on the position operator, and that can be applied to systems that do not exhibit perfect translational invariance, including disordered and quasiperiodic materials. The utility of the new formalism is demonstrated by numerical tight-binding studies of the orbital Edelstein effect in the disordered Haldane model.