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Topological Weyl semimetals (TWS) can be classified as type-I TWS, in which the density of states vanishes at the Weyl nodes, and type-II TWS where an electron and a hole pocket meet with finite density of states at the nodal energy. The dispersions of type-II Weyl nodes are tilted and break Lorentz invariance, allowing for physical properties distinct from those in a type-I TWS. We present minimal lattice models for both time-reversal-breaking and inversion-breaking type-II Weyl semimetals, and investigate their bulk properties and topological surface states. These lattice models capture the extended Fermi pockets and the connectivities of Fermi arcs. In addition to the Fermi arcs, which are topologically protected, we identify surface track states that arise out of the topological Fermi arc states at the transition from type-I to type-II with multiple Weyl nodes, and persist in the type-II TWS.
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Smooth interfaces of topological systems are known to host massive surface states along with the topologically protected chiral one. We show that in Weyl semimetals these massive states, along with the chiral Fermi arc, strongly alter the form of the Fermi-arc plasmon, Most saliently, they yield further collective plasmonic modes that are absent in a conventional interfaces. The plasmon modes are completely anisotropic as a consequence of the underlying anisotropy in the surface model and expected to have a clear-cut experimental signature, e.g. in electron-energy loss spectroscopy.
Even if Weyl semimetals are characterized by quasiparticles with well-defined chirality, exploiting this experimentally is severely hampered by Weyl lattice-fermions coming in pairs with opposite chirality, typically causing the net chirality picked up by experimental probes to vanish. Here we show this issue can be circumvented in a controlled manner when both time-reversal- and inversion- symmetry are broken. To this end, we investigate chirality-disbalance in the carbide family RMC$_2$ (R a rare-earth and M a transition metal), showing several members to be Weyl semimetals. Using the noncentrosymmetric ferromagnet NdRhC$_2$ as an illustrating example, we show that an odd number of Weyl nodes can be stabilized at its Fermi surface by properly tilting its magnetization. The tilt direction determines the sign of the resulting net chirality, opening up a simple route to control it.
The study of charge-density wave (CDW) distortions in Weyl semimetals has recently returned to the forefront, inspired by experimental interest in materials such as (TaSe4)2I. However, the interplay between collective phonon excitations and charge transport in Weyl-CDW systems has not been systematically studied. In this paper, we examine the longitudinal electromagnetic response due to collective modes in a Weyl semimetal gapped by a quasi one-dimensional charge-density wave order, using both continuum and lattice regularized models. We systematically compute the contributions of the collective modes to the linear and nonlinear optical conductivity of our models, both with and without tilting of the Weyl cones. We discover that, unlike in a single-band CDW, the gapless CDW collective mode does not contribute to the conductivity unless the Weyl cones are tilted. Going further, we show that the lowest nontrivial collective mode contribution to charge transport with untilted Weyl cones comes in the third-order conductivity, and is mediated by the gapped amplitude mode. We show that this leads to a sharply peaked third harmonic response at frequencies below the single-particle energy gap. We discuss the implications of our findings for transport experiments in Weyl-CDW systems.
We show that for two-band systems nonsymmorphic symmetries may enforce the existence of band crossings in the bulk, which realize Fermi surfaces of reduced dimensionality. We find that these unavoidable crossings originate from the momentum dependence of the nonsymmorphic symmetry, which puts strong restrictions on the global structure of the band configurations. Three different types of nonsymmorphic symmetries are considered: (i) a unitary nonsymmorphic symmetry, (ii) a nonsymmorphic magnetic symmetry, and (iii) a nonsymmorphic symmetry combined with inversion. For nonsymmorphic symmetries of the latter two types, the band crossings are located at high-symmetry points of the Brillouin zone, with their exact positions being determined by the algebra of the symmetry operators. To characterize these band degeneracies we introduce a emph{global} topological charge and show that it is of $mathbb{Z}_2$ type, which is in contrast to the emph{local} topological charge of Fermi points in, say, Weyl semimetals. To illustrate these concepts, we discuss the $pi$-flux state as well as the SSH model at its critical point and show that these two models fit nicely into our general framework of nonsymmorphic two-band systems.
Fermions in nature come in several types: Dirac, Majorana and Weyl are theoretically thought to form a complete list. Even though Majorana and Weyl fermions have for decades remained experimentally elusive, condensed matter has recently emerged as fertile ground for their discovery as low energy excitations of realistic materials. Here we show the existence of yet another particle - a new type of Weyl fermion - that emerges at the boundary between electron and hole pockets in a new type of Weyl semimetal phase of matter. This fermion was missed by Weyl in 1929 due to its breaking of the stringent Lorentz symmetry of high-energy physics. Lorentz invariance however is not present in condensed matter physics, and we predict that an established material, WTe$_2$, is an example of this novel type of topological semimetal hosting the new particle as a low energy excitation around a type-2 Weyl node. This node, although still a protected crossing, has an open, finite-density of states Fermi surface, likely resulting in a plethora physical properties very different from those of standard point-like Fermi surface Weyl points.
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