We present an overview of our recent work on transport phenomena in Weyl metals, which may be connected to their nontrivial topological properties, particularly to chiral anomaly. We argue that there are two basic phenomena, which are related to chiral anomaly in Weyl metals: Anomalous Hall Effect (AHE) and Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME). While AHE is in principle present in any ferromagnetic metal, we demonstrate that a magnetic Weyl metal is distinguished from an ordinary ferromagnetic metal by the absence of the extrinsic and the Fermi surface part of the intrinsic contributions to the AHE, as long as the Fermi energy is sufficiently close to the Weyl nodes. The AHE in a Weyl metal is thus shown to be a purely intrinsic, universal property, fully determined by the location of the Weyl nodes in the first Brillouin zone. In other words, a ferromagnetic Weyl metal may be thought of as the only example of a ferromagnetic metal with a purely intrinsic AHE. We further develop a fully microscopic theory of diffusive magnetotransport in Weyl metals. We derive coupled diffusion equations for the total and axial (i.e. node-antisymmetric) charge densities and show that chiral anomaly manifests as a magnetic-field-induced coupling between them. We demonstrate that an experimentally-observable consequence of CME in magnetotransport in Weyl metals is a quadratic negative magnetoresistance, which will dominate all other contributions to magnetoresistance under certain conditions and may be regarded as a smoking-gun transport characteristic, unique to Weyl metals.
Weyl nodes in three-dimensional Weyl semimetals break the Liouville equation, leading to the Liouville anomaly. Here we present a new approach to derive the semiclassical action and equations of motion for Weyl fermions in the presence of electromagnetic fields and torsions from the quantum field theory: combining the Wigner transformation with band projection operation. It has been shown that the Liouville anomaly, including a new pure torsion anomaly term, a mixing term between the electromagnetic fields and torsions as well as the conventional chiral anomaly, entirely differs from the count…
Weyl semimetals are a three dimensional topological phase of matter with linearly dispersed Weyl points which appear in pairs and carry opposite chirality. The separation of paired Weyl points allows charge transfer between them in the presence of parallel electric and magnetic fields, which is known as the chiral anomaly. In this paper, we theoretically study the influence of the chiral anomaly induced chiral charge imbalance on the Josephson current in a Weyl superconductor-Weyl semimetal-Weyl superconductor junction. In Weyl superconductors, two types of pairings are considered, namely, zer…
The chiral anomaly may be realized in condensed matter systems with pairs of Weyl points. Here we show that the chiral anomaly can be realized in diverse noncentrosymmetric systems even without Weyl point pairs when spin-orbit coupling induces nonzero Berry curvature flux through Fermi surfaces. This motivates the condensed matter chiral anomaly to be interpreted as a Fermi surface property rather than a Weyl point property. The spin-orbit-coupling-induced anomaly reproduces the well-known charge transport properties of the chiral anomaly such as the negative longitudinal magnetoresistance and…
We study electric field and temperature gradient driven magnetoconductivity of a Weyl semimetal system. To analyze the responses, we utilize the kinetic equation with semiclassical equations of motion modified by the Berry curvature and orbital magnetization of the wave-packet. Apart from known positive quadratic magnetoconductivity, we show that due to chiral anomaly, the magnetconductivity can become non-analytic function of the magnetic field, proportional to 3/2 power of the magnetic field at finite temperatures. We also show that time-reversal symmetry breaking tilt of the Dirac cones res…
We develop a semiclassical theory of sound absorption in Weyl semimetals in magnetic fields. We focus on the contribution to the absorption that stems from the existence of Berry monopoles in the band structure of such materials, or, equivalently, due to the chiral anomaly and chiral magnetic effect. Sound absorption is shown to come primarily from the motion of Weyl nodes in energy space, associated with the propagation of a sound wave. We argue that acoustic magneto-chiral dichroism, which occurs when absorption of sound is different for opposite propagation directions, and for opposite dire…
We show that Multiple Weyl and double Weyl points arise in a chiral elastic system through stacking many two-dimensional honeycomb mechanical structures. On the distinct kz plane, the band structures calculated from tight-binding model exhibit the presence of Weyl points at Brillouin vertices and double Weyl Points at Brillouin centre. Based on the tight-binding model, we design a practical chiral mechanical structure which can be fabricated by current 3D printing technology. The numerical calculation illustrates several Weyl and double-Weyl points as expected in our analysis of tight-binding …
We propose a mechanism to directly measure the chiral anomaly in disorder Weyl semimetals (WSMs) by the Kondo effect. We find that in a magnetic and electric field driven WSM, the locations of the Kondo peaks can be modulated by the chiral chemical potential, which is proportional to $\mathbf{E}\cdot \mathbf{B}$. The Kondo peaks come from spin fluctuations within the impurities, which apart from the temperature, relate closely to the host's Fermi level. In WSMs, the chiral-anomaly-induced chirality population imbalance will shift the local Fermi levels of the paired Weyl valleys toward opposit…
We identify a signature of chirality in the electrical conduction along magnetic vortices in a Weyl superconductor: The conductance depends on whether the magnetic field is parallel or antiparallel to the vector in the Brillouin zone that separates Weyl points of opposite chirality.
After the experimental realization, the Berry curvature dipole (BCD) induced nonlinear Hall effect (NLHE) has attracted tremendous interest to the condensed matter community. Here, we investigate another family of Hall effect, namely, chiral anomaly induced nonlinear Hall effect (CNHE) in multi-Weyl semimetal (mWSM). In contrast to the BCD induced NLHE, CNHE appears because of the combination of both chiral anomaly and anomalous velocity due to non-trivial Berry curvature. Using the semiclassical Boltzmann theory within the relaxation time approximation, we show that, in contrast to the chiral…
A space-time dependent node separation in Weyl semimetals acts as an axial vector field. Coupled with domain wall motion in magnetic Weyl semimetals, this induces axial electric and magnetic fields localized at the domain wall. We show how these fields can activate the axial (chiral) anomaly and provide a direct experimental signature of it. Specifically, a domain wall provides a spatially dependent Weyl node separation and an axial magnetic field $\textbf{B}_5$, and domain wall movement, driven by an external magnetic field, gives the Weyl node separation a time dependence, inducing an axial …
We show how the axial (chiral) anomaly induces a spin torque on the magnetization in magnetic Weyl semimetals. The anomaly produces an imbalance in left- and right-handed chirality carriers when non-orthogonal electric and magnetic fields are applied. Such imbalance generates a spin density which exerts a torque on the magnetization, the strength of which can be controlled by the intensity of the applied electric field. We show how this results in an electric control of the chirality of domain walls, as well as in an improvement of the domain wall dynamics, by delaying the onset of the Walker …
Chiral anomaly or Adler-Bell-Jackiw anomaly in Weyl semimetals (WSMs) has a significant impact on the electron transport behaviors, leading to remarkable longitudinal or planar electrical and thermoelectric transport phenomena in the presence of electromagnetic gauge fields. These phenomena are consequences of the imbalanced chiral charge and energy induced by chiral anomaly in the presence of parallel electric ($\mathbf{E}$) and magnetic ($\mathbf{B}$) fields ($\mathbf{E \cdot B }\neq 0$) or $(\mathbf{B \cdot \nabla }T\neq 0)$ ($\mathbf{\nabla}T$ is the thermal gradient). We here propose anot…
Condensed matter systems realizing Weyl fermions exhibit striking phenomenology derived from their topologically protected surface states as well as chiral anomalies induced by electromagnetic fields. More recently, inhomogeneous strain or magnetization were predicted to result in chiral electric $\mathbf{E}_5$ and magnetic $\mathbf{B}_5$ fields, which modify and enrich the chiral anomaly with additional terms. In this work, we develop a lattice-based approach to describe the chiral anomaly, which involves Landau and pseudo-Landau levels and treats all anomalous terms on equal footing, while n…
The Weyl semi-metal candidate MoTe$_{2}$ is expected to exhibit a range of exotic electronic transport properties. It exhibits a structural phase transition near room temperature that is evident in the thermal hysteresis in resistivity and thermopower (Seebeck coefficient) as well as large spin-orbit interaction. Here, we also document a resistivity anomaly of up to 13% in the temperature window between 25 and 50 K, which is found to be strongly anisotropic. Based on the experimental data in conjunction with density functional theory calculations, we conjecture that the anomaly can be related …
Being encouraged by the interplay between topology, superconductivity and magnetism, we experimentally investigate charge transport through the interface between the Nb superconductor and the time-reversal symmetry breaking Weyl semimetal Co$_3$Sn$_2$S$_2$. In addition to the proximity induced superconducting gap, we observe several subgap features, among which the most interesting is the prominent subgap zero-bias anomaly, absolutely stable against external magnetic fields up to the critical field of Nb. As the promising scenario for the zero-bias anomaly to appear in transport characteristic…
We propose a non-dissipative transport effect and vortical response in Weyl semimetals in the presence of spatial inhomogeneities, namely a spatially varying tilt of the Weyl cones. We show that when the spectrum is anisotropic and tilted due to spatial lattice variations, one is confronted with generalized quantum anomalies due to the effective fields stemming from the tilt structure. In particular, we demonstrate that the position-dependent tilt parameter induces local vorticity, thus generating a chiral vortical effect even in the absence of rotation or magnetic fields. As a consequence, it…
We propose a mechanism to generate dissipationless current in time reversal symmetry breaking Weyl semimetals through the anomalous chiral magnetic effect (ACME). The ACME current is induced by chiral imbalance and flows along the direction of the Weyl nodes separation in momentum space. In contrast to the chiral magnetic effect, the ACME is not related to the chiral anomaly and does not require external magnetic field. In the presence of parallel electric and magnetic fields, the ACME gives rise to an antisymmetric linear magnetoresistance and a planar Hall conductivity, which we estimate to …
In Weyl semimetals the application of parallel electric and magnetic fields leads to valley polarization -- an occupation disbalance of valleys of opposite chirality -- a direct consequence of the chiral anomaly. In this work, we present numerical tools to explore such nonequilibrium effects in spatially confined three-dimensional systems with a variable disorder potential, giving exact solutions to leading order in the disorder potential and the applied electric field. Application to a Weyl-metal slab shows that valley polarization also occurs without an external magnetic field as an effect o…
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 $Φ$, due to an imbalance between Weyl fermions of opposite chirality. A universal contribution $dI/dΦ=(e/h)^2μ$ (at equilibrium chemical potential $μ$ 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.
Due to their topological charge, or chirality, the Weyl cones present in topological semimetals are considered robust against arbitrary perturbations. One well-understood exception to this robustness is the pairwise creation or annihilation of Weyl cones, which involves the overlap of two oppositely charged nodes in energy and momentum. Here we show that their topological charge can in fact change sign, in a process that involves the merging of not two, but three Weyl nodes. This is facilitated by the presence of rotation and time-reversal symmetries, which constrain the relative positions of …
The Fermi liquid has an emergent low-energy symmetry that corresponds to charge conservation at each momentum on the Ferm surface. Recently Else, Thorngren and Senthil (ETS) argued that the emergent symmetry had a specific t'Hooft anomaly. We give a simple derivation of the ETS anomaly using the chiral anomaly of Weyl fermions.
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 dis…
We predict a nonlinear Hall effect in certain Weyl semimetals with broken inversion symmetry. When the energy dispersions about pairs of Weyl nodes are skewed -- the Weyl cones are "tilted" -- the concerted actions of the anomalous velocity and the chiral anomaly give rise to the nonlinear Hall effect. This Hall conductivity is linear in both electric and magnetic fields, and depends critically on the tilting of the Weyl cones. We also show that this effect does not rely on a finite Berry curvature dipole, in contrast to the intrinsic quantum nonlinear Hall effect that was recently observed in…
Observation of the chiral anomaly induced negative magneto-resistance in 3D Weyl semi-metal TaAs
Weyl半金属是石墨烯的三维类似物。根据量子场论，费米能级附近外尔点的出现将引起与手征反常有关的新的输运现象。在本文中，我们报告的第一个实验证据的长期预期的负磁阻产生的手征异常在一个新预测的时间反演不变的Weyl半金属材料TaAs。从非常弱的磁场开始，已检测到清晰的Shubnikov de Haas振荡（SdH）。对SdH峰的分析表明，沿回旋加速器轨道积累的Berry相位为π，表明外尔点的存在。
The low-energy quasiparticles of Weyl semimetals are a condensed-matter realization of the Weyl fermions introduced in relativistic field theory. Chiral anomaly, the nonconservation of the chiral charge under parallel electric and magnetic fields, is arguably the most important phenomenon of Weyl semimetals and has been explained as an imbalance between the occupancies of the gapless, zeroth Landau levels with opposite chiralities. This widely accepted picture has served as the basis for subsequent studies. Here we report the breakdown of the chiral anomaly in Weyl semimetals in a strong magne…
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 t…
In a recent work, a contribution to the Nernst current of a Dirac or Weyl semimetal coming from the conformal anomaly was reported. Being originated from an anomaly - a vacuum contribution -, a non-zero transport coefficient was predicted at zero temperature and chemical potential. In this work we perform a Kubo formula calculation of the thermoelectrical coefficient and confirm that the result agrees with the quantum field theory estimation in the limit of zero temperature and chemical potential. For finite chemical potential μ around μ = 0 the transverse Seebeck coefficient shows a plateau i…
The anomalous term $\sim\mathbf{EB}$ in the balance of the chiral density can be rewritten as quantum current in the classical balance of density. Therefore it does not violate classical conservation laws as it is claimed to be caused by quantum fluctuations.
Chiral pumping from optical electric fields oscillating at THz frequencies is observed in the Weyl material TaAs with electric and magnetic fields aligned along both the a- and c-axes. Free carrier spectral weight enhancement is measured directly for the first time, confirming theoretical expectations of chiral pumping. A departure from linear field-dependence of the Drude weight is observed at the highest fields in the quantum limit, providing direct evidence of field-dependent Fermi velocity of the chiral Landau level. Implications for the chiral magnetic effect in Weyl semimetals from the o…
Quantum anomalies in Weyl semimetal (for either ${\bf E}\cdot{\bf B} \neq 0$ or ${\bf \nabla}T\cdot{\bf B} \neq 0$) leads to chiral charge and energy pumping between the opposite chirality nodes. This results in chiral charge and energy imbalance between the Weyl nodes which manifests in several intriguing magneto-transport phenomena. Here, we investigate the role of electrical-, thermal-, and gravitational chiral anomaly on magneto-transport in Weyl semimetals. We predict the planar Ettinghausen and Righi-Leduc effect to be a distinct signature of these quantum anomalies. We also demonstrate …
