No Arabic abstract
The dynamo effect is a class of macroscopic phenomena responsible for generation and maintaining magnetic fields in astrophysical bodies. It hinges on hydrodynamic three-dimensional motion of conducting gases and plasmas that achieve high hydrodynamic and/or magnetic Reynolds numbers due to large length scales involved. The existing laboratory experiments modeling dynamos are challenging and involve large apparatuses containing conducting fluids subject to fast helical flows. Here we propose that electronic solid-state materials -- in particular, hydrodynamic metals -- may serve as an alternative platform to observe some aspects of the dynamo effect. Motivated by recent experimental developments, this paper focuses on hydrodynamic Weyl semimetals, where the dominant scattering mechanism is due to interactions. We derive Navier-Stokes equations along with equations of magneto-hydrodynamics that describe transport of Weyl electron-hole plasma appropriate in this regime. We estimate the hydrodynamic and magnetic Reynolds numbers for this system. The latter is a key figure of merit of the dynamo mechanism. We show that it can be relatively large to enable observation of the dynamo-induced magnetic field bootstrap in experiment. Finally, we generalize the simplest dynamo instability model -- Ponomarenko dynamo -- to the case of a hydrodynamic Weyl semimetal and show that the chiral anomaly term reduces the threshold magnetic Reynolds number for the dynamo instability.
We investigate the effects of bulk impurities on the electronic spectrum of Weyl semimetals, a recently identified class of Dirac-type materials. Using a $T$-matrix approach, we study resonant scattering due to a localized impurity in tight bindi
We report on a study of intrinsic superconductivity in a Weyl metal, i.e. a doped Weyl semimetal. Two distinct superconducting states are possible in this system in principle: a zero-momentum pairing BCS state, with point nodes in the gap function; and a finite-momentum FFLO-like state, with a full nodeless gap. We find that, in an inversion-symmetric Weyl metal the odd-parity BCS state has a lower energy than the FFLO state, despite the nodes in the gap. The FFLO state, on the other hand, may have a lower energy in a noncentrosymmetric Weyl metal, in which Weyl nodes of opposite chirality have different energy. However, realizing the FFLO state is in general very difficult since the paired states are not related by any exact symmetry, which precludes a weak-coupling superconducting instability. We also discuss some of the physical properties of the nodal BCS state, in particular Majorana and Fermi arc surface states.
The transition metal dipnictides TaAs2 , TaSb2 , NbAs2 and NbSb2 have recently sparked interest for exhibiting giant magnetoresistance. While the exact nature of magnetoresistance in these materials is still under active investigation, there are experimental results indicating anisotropic negative magnetoresistance. We study the effect of magnetic field on the band structure topology of these materials by applying a Zeeman splitting. In the absence of magnetic field, we find that the materials are weak topological insulators, which is in agreement with previous studies. When the magnetic field is applied, we find that type-II Weyl points form. This result is found first from a symmetry argument, and then numerically for a k.p model of TaAs2 and a tight-binding model of NbSb2. This effect can be of help in search for an explanation of the anomalous magnetoresistance in these materials.
We present a new framework for computing low frequency transport properties of strongly correlated, ergodic systems. Our main assumption is that, when a thermalizing diffusive system is driven at frequency $omega$, domains of size $xi simsqrt{D/omega}$ can be considered as internally thermal, but weakly coupled with each other. We calculate the transport coefficients to lowest order in the coupling, assuming incoherent transport between such domains. Our framework naturally captures the sub-leading non analytic corrections to the transport coefficients, known as hydrodynamic long time tails. In addition, it allows us to obtain a generalized relation between charge and thermal transport coefficients, in the spirit of the Wiedemann-Franz law. We verify our results, which satisfy several non-trivial consistency checks, via exact diagonalization studies on the one-dimensional extended Fermi-Hubbard model.
We determine the information scrambling rate $lambda_{L}$ due to electron-electron Coulomb interaction in graphene. $lambda_{L}$ characterizes the growth of chaos and has been argued to give information about the thermalization and hydrodynamic transport coefficients of a many-body system. We demonstrate that $lambda_{L}$ behaves for strong coupling similar to transport and energy relaxation rates. A weak coupling analysis, however, reveals that scrambling is related to dephasing or single particle relaxation. Furthermore, $lambda_{L}$ is found to be parametrically larger than the collision rate relevant for hydrodynamic processes, such as electrical conduction or viscous flow, and the rate of energy relaxation, relevant for thermalization. Thus, while scrambling is obviously necessary for thermalization and quantum transport, it does generically not set the time scale for these processes. In addition we derive a quantum kinetic theory for information scrambling that resembles the celebrated Boltzmann equation and offers a physically transparent insight into quantum chaos in many-body systems.