No Arabic abstract
The response to an electric field (DC and AC) of electronic systems in which the Fermi surface consists of a number of 3D Weyl points (such as some pyrochlore iridates) exhibits a peculiar combination of characteristics usually associated with insulating and conducting behaviour. Generically a neutral plasma in clean materials can be described by a tight binding model with a strong spin-orbit interaction. A system of that type has a vanishing DC conductivity; however the current response to the DC field is very slow: the current decays with time in a powerwise manner, different from an insulator. The AC conductivity, in addition to a finite real part which is linear in frequency, exhibits an imaginary part that increases logarithmically as function of the UV cutoff (atomic scale). This leads to substantial dielectric response like a large dielectric constant at low frequencies. This is in contrast to a 2D Weyl semimetal like graphene at neutrality point where the AC conductivity is purely pseudo-dissipative. The Coulomb interaction between electrons is long range and sufficiently strong to make a significant impact on transport. The interaction contribution to the AC conductivity is calculated within the tight binding model.
Type II Weyl semimetal, a three dimensional gapless topological phase, has drawn enormous interest recently. These topological semimetals enjoy overtilted dispersion and Weyl nodes that separate the particle and hole pocket. Using perturbation renormalization group, we identify possible renormalization of the interaction vertices, which show a tendency toward instability. We further adopt a self-consistent mean-field approach to study possible instability of the type II Weyl semimetals under short-range electron-electron interaction. It is found that the instabilities are much easier to form in type II Weyl semimetals than the type I case. Eight different mean-field orders are identified, among which we further show that the polar charge density wave (CDW) phase exhibits the lowest energy. This CDW order is originated from the nesting of the Fermi surfaces and could be a possible ground state in interacting type II Weyl semimetals.
Weyl semimetals, featuring massless linearly dispersing chiral fermions in three dimensions, provide an excellent platform for studying the interplay of electronic interactions and topology, and exploring new correlated states of matter. Here, we examine the effect of a local repulsive interaction on an inversion-symmetry breaking Weyl semimetal model, using cluster dynamical mean field theory and variational cluster approximation methods. Our analysis reveals a continuous transition from the gapless Weyl semimetal phase to a gapped spin density wave ordered phase at a critical value of the interaction, which is determined by the band structure parameters. Further, we introduce a finite tilt in the linear dispersion and examine the corresponding behavior for a type-II Weyl semimetal model, where the critical interaction strength is found to be significantly diminished, indicating a greater susceptibility towards interactions. The behavior of different physical quantities, such as the double occupancy, the spectral function and the Berry curvature associated with the Weyl nodes are obtained in both the semimetallic and the magnetically ordered states. Finally, we provide an interaction-induced phase diagram for the Weyl semimetal model, as a function of the tilt parameter.
There is considerable current interest to explore electronic topology in strongly correlated metals, with heavy fermion systems providing a promising setting. Recently, a Weyl-Kondo semimetal phase has been concurrently discovered in theoretical and experimental studies. The theoretical work was carried out in a Kondo lattice model that is time-reversal invariant but inversion-symmetry breaking. In this paper, we show in some detail how nonsymmorphic space-group symmetry and strong correlations cooperate to form Weyl nodal excitations with highly reduced velocity and pin the resulting Weyl nodes to the Fermi energy. A tilted variation of the Weyl-Kondo solution is further analyzed here, following the recent consideration of such effect in the context of understanding a large spontaneous Hall effect in Ce$_3$Bi$_4$Pd$_3$ (Dzsaber et al., arXiv:1811.02819). We discuss the implications of our results for the enrichment of the global phase diagram of heavy fermion metals, and for the space-group symmetry enforcement of topological semimetals in other strongly correlated settings.
The surface of a Weyl semimetal famously hosts an exotic topological metal that contains open Fermi arcs rather than closed Fermi surfaces. In this work, we show that the surface is also endowed with a feature normally associated with strongly interacting systems, namely, Luttinger arcs, defined as zeros of the electron Greens function. The Luttinger arcs connect surface projections of Weyl nodes of opposite chirality and form closed loops with the Fermi arcs when the Weyl nodes are undoped. Upon doping, the ends of the Fermi and Luttinger arcs separate and the intervening regions get filled by surface projections of bulk Fermi surfaces. For bilayered Weyl semimetals, we prove two remarkable implications: (i) the precise shape of the Luttinger arcs can be determined experimentally by removing a surface layer. We use this principle to sketch the Luttinger arcs for Co and Sn terminations in Co$_{3}$Sn$_{2}$S$_{2}$; (ii) the area enclosed by the Fermi and Luttinger arcs equals the surface particle density to zeroth order in the interlayer couplings. We argue that the approximate equivalence survives interactions that are weak enough to leave the system in the Weyl limit, and term this phenomenon weak Luttingers theorem.
We present an analytical low-energy theory of piezoelectric electron-phonon interactions in undoped Weyl semimetals, taking into account also Coulomb interactions. We show that piezoelectric interactions generate a long-range attractive potential between Weyl fermions. This potential comes with a characteristic angular anisotropy. From the one-loop renormalization group approach and a mean-field analysis, we predict that superconducting phases with either conventional s-wave singlet pairing or nodal-line triplet pairing could be realized for sufficiently strong piezoelectric coupling. For small couplings, we show that the quasi-particle decay rate exhibits a linear temperature dependence where the prefactor vanishes only in a logarithmic manner as the quasi-particle energy approaches the Weyl point. For practical estimates, we consider the Weyl semimetal TaAs.