Geometry of Contact Terms in Linear Response: Applications to Elasticity

Abstract: Employing the Kubo linear response formalism to calculate the elasticity of anisotropic systems has been shown to yield odd elastic moduli. For Hamiltonian systems, this result seems to be contradictory as it would violate energy conservation. To resolve this discrepancy, we examine the predictions of quantum linear response in the context of our expectation from classical elasticity theory. Our framework reveals that the geometry of the space of strain perturbations introduces correction factors to the correspondence between the Kubo formula and the elastic moduli which resolves the contradiction. We use a two-dimensional gas of electrons in a magnetic field as a pedagogical example. We use generalized f-sum rules to demonstrate how contact terms may reveal themselves in experimental measurements. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for interpreting more general linear response functions.