Space of conformal boundary conditions from the view of higher Berry phase: Flow of Berry curvature in parametrized BCFTs

Abstract: In this work, we study the connection between two subjects: the space of conformal boundary conditions in boundary conformal field theories (BCFTs) and the space of gapped systems characterized by higher Berry phases. We explore this connection by analyzing multi-parameter spectral flow in Dirac fermion BCFTs with continuously parametrized conformal boundary conditions, which are introduced by coupling a CFT to a family of gapped systems. When the gapped systems belong to a nontrivial higher Berry class, the associated conformal boundary conditions induce a flow of the ordinary Berry curvature, resulting in a Chern number pump in the Fock space of the BCFT. This phenomenon is the BCFT analog of Berry curvature flow in one-dimensional parametrized gapped systems, where the flow occurs in real space. Building on this correspondence, we introduce the notions of higher Berry curvature and higher Berry invariants within the BCFT framework. Our results provide a new perspective for studying the topological properties of families of conformal boundary states and gapped ground states: if a family of gapped states belongs to a nontrivial higher Berry class, then the corresponding entanglement Hamiltonians exhibit a multi-parameter spectral flow that carries Berry curvature in the Fock space.