No Arabic abstract
The massless fermions of a Weyl semimetal come in two species of opposite chirality, in two cones of the band structure. As a consequence, the current $j$ induced in one Weyl cone by a magnetic field $B$ (the chiral magnetic effect, CME) is cancelled in equilibrium by an opposite current in the other cone. Here we show that superconductivity offers a way to avoid this cancellation, by means of a flux bias that gaps out a Weyl cone jointly with its particle-hole conjugate. The remaining gapless Weyl cone and its particle-hole conjugate represent a single fermionic species, with renormalized charge $e^ast$ and a single chirality $pm$ set by the sign of the flux bias. As a consequence, the CME is no longer cancelled in equilibrium but appears as a supercurrent response $partial j/partial B=pm(e^ast e/h^2)mu$ along the magnetic field at chemical potential $mu$.
Recently, much research has been dedicated to understanding topological superconductivity and Majorana zero modes induced by a magnetic field in hybrid proximity structures. This paper proposes a realization of topological superconductivity in a short Josephson junction at an edge of a 2D topological insulator subject to a perpendicular magnetic field. The magnetic field effect is entirely orbital, coming from a gradient of the order parameter phase at the edge, which results in a soliton defect at the junction with a pair of gapless Andreev bound states. The latter are reducible to Majorana zero modes by a unitary rotation and protected by a chiral symmetry. Furthermore, both ground state and excitations are quasiperiodic in the magnetic flux enclosed in the junction, with the period equal to the double flux quantum $2Phi_0 = h/e$. This behaviour follows from the gauge invariance of the $4pi$ - phase periodicity of the Majorana states and manifests itself as $2Phi_0$ - spaced magnetic oscillations of the critical current. Another proposed observable is a persistent current occurring in the absence of an external phase bias. Beside the oscillations, it shows a sign reversal prompted by the neutral Majorana zero modes. These findings offer the possibility to access topological superconductivity through low-field dc magnetotransport measurements.
It was shown recently that Weyl fermions in a superconducting vortex lattice can condense into Landau levels. Here we study the chiral magnetic effect in the lowest Landau level: The appearance of an equilibrium current $I$ along the lines of magnetic flux $Phi$, due to an imbalance between Weyl fermions of opposite chirality. A universal contribution $dI/dPhi=(e/h)^2mu$ (at equilibrium chemical potential $mu$ relative to the Weyl point) appears when quasiparticles of one of the two chiralities are confined in vortex cores. The confined states are charge-neutral Majorana fermions.
We describe a new type of the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME) that should occur in Weyl semimetals with an asymmetry in the dispersion relations of the left- and right-handed chiral Weyl fermions. In such materials, time-dependent pumping of electrons from a non-chiral external source generates a non-vanishing chiral chemical potential. This is due to the different capacities of the left- and right-handed (LH and RH) chiral Weyl cones arising from the difference in the density of states in the LH and RH cones. The chiral chemical potential then generates, via the chiral anomaly, a current along the direction of an applied magnetic field even in the absence of an external electric field. The source of chirality imbalance in this new setup is thus due to the band structure of the system and the presence of (non-chiral) electron source, and not due to the parallel electric and magnetic fields. We illustrate the effect by an argument based on the effective field theory, and by the chiral kinetic theory calculation for a rotationally invariant Weyl semimetal with different Fermi velocities in the left and right chiral Weyl cones; we also consider the case of a Weyl semimetal with Weyl nodes at different energies. We argue that this effect is generically present in Weyl semimetals with different dispersion relations for LH and RH chiral Weyl cones, such as SrSi2 recently predicted as a Weyl semimetal with broken inversion and mirror symmetries, as long as the chiral relaxation time is much longer than the transport scattering time.
We study the dynamic chiral magnetic conductivity (DCMC) and natural optical activity in an inversion-broken tilted Weyl semimetal (WSM). Starting from the Kubo formula, we derive the analytical expressions for the DCMC for two different directions of the incident electromagnetic wave. We show that the angle of rotation of the plane of polarization of the transmitted wave exhibits remarkable anisotropic behavior and is larger along the tilt direction. This striking anisotropy of DCMC which results in anisotropic optical activity and rotary power, can be experimentally observed as a topological magneto-electric effect of inversion-broken tilted WSMs. Finally, using the low energy Hamiltonian, we show that the DCMC follows the universal $frac{1}{omega^2}$ decay in the high frequency regime. In the low frequency regime, however, the DCMC shows sharp peaks at the tilt dependent effective chemical potentials of the left-handed and right-handed Weyl points. This can serve as a signature to distinguish between the type-I and type-II Weyl semimetals.
We show that the surface of an $s$-wave superconductor decorated with a two-dimensional lattice of magnetic impurities can exhibit chiral topological superconductivity. If impurities order ferromagnetically and the superconducting surface supports a sufficiently strong Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling, Shiba sub-gap states at impurity locations can hybridize into Bogoliubov bands with non-vanishing, sometimes large, Chern number $C$. This topological superconductor supports $C$ chiral Majorana edge modes. We construct phase diagrams for model two-dimensional superconductors, accessing the dilute and dense magnetic impurity limits analytically and the intermediate regime numerically. To address potential experimental systems, we identify stable configurations of ferromagnetic iron atoms on the Pb (111) surface and conclude that ferromagnetic adatoms on Pb surfaces can provide a versatile platform for two-dimensional topological superconductivity.