No Arabic abstract
Auger recombination (AR) being electron-hole annihilation with energy-momentum transfer to another carrier is believed to speed up in materials with small band gap. We theoretically show that this rule is violated in gapless three-dimensional materials with ultra-relativistic electron-hole dispersion, Weyl semimetals (WSM). Namely, AR is prohibited by energy-momentum conservation laws in prototypical WSM with a single Weyl node, even in the presence of anisotropy and tilt. In real multi-node WSM, the geometric dissimilarity of nodal dispersions enables weak inter-node AR, which is further suppressed by strong screening due to large number of nodes. While partial AR rates between the nodes of the same node group are mutually equal, the inter-group processes are non-reciprocal, so that one of groups is geometrically protected from AR. Our calculations show that geometrical protection can help prolonging AR lifetime by the two orders of magnitude, up to the level of nanoseconds.
Auger recombination (AR) of the ground biexciton state in quantum-confined lead salt nanowires (NWs) with a strong coupling between the conduction and the valence bands is shown to be strongly suppressed, and only excited biexciton states contribute to Auger decay. The AR rate is predicted to be greatly reduced when temperature or the NW radius are decreased, and the effect is explained by decrease in both the population of excited biexciton states and overlap of phonon-broadened single- and biexciton states. Suppression of AR of multiexciton states exhibiting strong radiative decay makes obviously lead salt NWs a subject of special interest for numerous lasing applications.
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.
We investigate higher-order Weyl semimetals (HOWSMs) having bulk Weyl nodes attached to both surface and hinge Fermi arcs. We identify a new type of Weyl node, that we dub a $2nd$ order Weyl node, that can be identified as a transition in momentum space in which both the Chern number and a higher order topological invariant change. As a proof of concept we use a model of stacked higher order quadrupole insulators to identify three types of WSM phases: $1st$-order, $2nd$-order, and hybrid-order. The model can also realize type-II and hybrid-tilt WSMs with various surface and hinge arcs. Moreover, we show that a measurement of charge density in the presence of magnetic flux can help identify some classes of $2nd$ order WSMs. Remarkably, we find that coupling a $2nd$-order Weyl phase with a conventional $1st$-order one can lead to a hybrid-order topological insulator having coexisting surface cones and flat hinge arcs that are independent and not attached to each other. Finally, we show that periodic driving can be utilized as a way for generating HOWSMs. Our results are relevant to metamaterials as well as various phases of Cd$_3$As$_2$, KMgBi, and rutile-structure PtO$_2$ that have been predicted to realize higher order Dirac semimetals.
Type-II Weyl semimetals are characterized by the tilted linear dispersion in the low-energy excitations, mimicking Weyl fermions but with manifest violation of the Lorentz invariance, which has intriguing quantum transport properties. The magnetoconductivity of type-II Weyl semimetals is investigated numerically based on lattice models in parallel electric and magnetic field. We show that in the high-field regime, the sign of the magnetoconductivity of an inversion-symmetry-breaking type-II Weyl semimetals depends on the direction of the magnetic field, whereas in the weak field regime, positive magnetoconductivity is always obtained regardless of magnetic field direction. We find that the weak localization is sensitive to the spatial extent of impurity potential. In time-reversal symmetry breaking type-II Weyl semimetals, the system displays either positive or negative magnetoconductivity along the direction of band tilting, owing to the associated effect of group velocity, Berry curvature and the magnetic field.
We present how to detect type-$1$ Weyl nodes in a material by inelastic neutron scattering. Such an experiment first of all allows one to determine the dispersion of the Weyl fermions. We extend the reasoning to produce a quantitative test of the Weyl equation taking into account realistic anisotropic properties. These anisotropies are mostly contained in the form of the emergent magnetic moment of the excitations, which determines how they couple to the neutron. Although there are many material parameters, we find several quantitative predictions that are universal and demonstrate that the excitations are described by solutions to the Weyl equation. The realistic, anisotropic coupling between electrons and neutrons implies that even fully unpolarized neutrons can reveal the spin-momentum locking of the Weyl fermions because the neutrons will couple to some components of the Weyl fermion pseudospin more strongly. On the other hand, in an experiment with polarized neutrons, the scattered neutron beam remains fully polarized in a direction that varies as a function of momentum transfer (within the range of validity of the Weyl equation). This allows measurement of the chirality of Weyl fermions for inversion symmetric nodes. Furthermore, we estimate that the scattering rate may be large enough for such experiments to be practical; in particular, the magnetic moment may be larger than the ordinary Bohr magneton, compensating for a small density of states.