No Arabic abstract
Torsional strain in Weyl semimetals excites a unidirectional chiral density wave propagating in the direction of the torsional vector. This gapless excitation, named the chiral sound wave, is generated by a particular realization of the axial anomaly via the triple-axial (AAA) anomalous diagram. We show that the presence of the torsion-generated chiral sound leads to a linear behavior of the specific heat of a Weyl semimetal and to an enhancement of the thermal conductivty at experimentally accessible temperatures. We also demonstrate that such an elastic twist lowers the temperature of the sample, thus generating a new, anomalous type of elasto-calorific effect. Measurements of these thermodynamical effects will provide experimental verification of the exotic triple-axial anomaly as well as the reality of the elastic pseudomagnetic fields in Weyl semimetals.
The transport properties of massless fermions in $3+1$ spacetime dimension have been in the focus of recent theoretical and experimental research. New transport properties appear as consequences of chiral anomalies. The most prominent is the generation of a current in a magnetic field, the so-called chiral magnetic effect leading to an enhancement of the electric conductivity (negative magnetoresistivity). We study the analogous effect for axial magnetic fields that couple with opposite signs to fermions of different chirality. We emphasize local charge conservation and study the induced magneto-conductivities proportional to an electric field and a gradient in temperature. We find that the magnetoconductivity is enhanced whereas the magneto-thermoelectric conductivity is diminished. As a side result we interpret an anomalous contribution to the entropy current as a generalized thermal Hall effect.
The combination of Dirac physics and elasticity has been explored at length in graphene where the so--called elastic gauge fields have given rise to an entire new field of research and applications: Straintronics. The fact that these elastic fields couple to fermions as the electromagnetic field, implies that many electromagnetic responses will have elastic counterparts not explored before. In this work we will first show that the presence of elastic gauge fields will be the rule rather than the exception in most of the topologically non--trivial materials in two and three dimensions. In particular we will extract the elastic gauge fields associated to the recently observed Weyl semimetals, the three dimensional graphene. As it is known, quantum electrodynamics suffers from the chiral anomaly whose consequences have been recently explored in matter systems. We will show that, associated to the physics of the anomalies, and as a counterpart of the Hall conductivity, elastic materials will have a Hall viscosity in two and three dimensions with a coefficient orders of magnitude bigger than the previously studied response. The magnitude and generality of the new effect will greatly improve the chances for the experimental observation of this topological, non dissipative response.
We study the single-particle spectrum of three-dimensional Weyl semimetals taking into account electron-phonon interactions that are the result of straining the material. We find that a well-defined fermionic excitation appears in addition to the standard peak corresponding to quasiparticle states as suggested by Landau-Fermi liquid theory. Contrary to the case of Dirac systems interacting via the Coulomb interaction, these satellite peaks appear even at lowest order in perturbation theory. The new excitations are anisotropic, as opposed to the single-particle spectrum, and their behavior is dictated by the Debye frequency, which naturally regulates the electron-phonon coupling.
We show that Weyl semimetals exhibit a mixed axial-torsional anomaly in the presence of axial torsion, a concept exclusive of these materials with no known natural fundamental interpretation in terms of the geometry of spacetime. This anomaly implies a nonconservation of the axial current---the difference in current of left- and right-handed chiral fermions---when the torsion of the spacetime in which the Weyl fermions move couples with opposite sign to different chiralities. The anomaly is activated by driving transverse sound waves through a Weyl semimetal with a spatially varying tilted dispersion, which can be engineered by applying strain. This leads to sizable alternating current in presence of a magnetic field that provides a clear-cut experimental signature of our predictions.
The axial magnetic effect (AME) is one of the anomalous transport phenomena in which the energy current is induced by an axial magnetic field. Here, we numerically study the AME for the relativistic Wilson fermion in the axial magnetic field and a twisted Dirac semimetal. The AME current density inside the bulk is nonzero, and particularly in the low-energy regime for the former model, it is explained by the field-theoretical results without any fitting parameter. However, for both models, the average AME current density vanishes owing to the surface contribution. The axial gauge field is regarded as the spatially modulated (effective) Zeeman field and induces the spatially modulated energy magnetization. The AME is attributed to the magnetization energy current and hence cannot be observed in transport experiments.