Real-time evolution and charge pumping in magnetic Weyl semimetals are studied by solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equations. In the adiabatic limit of the real-time evolution, we show that the total pumped charge is quantized in the magnetic Weyl semimetals as in the quantum Hall system although the Weyl semimetal has no bulk gap. We examine how the disorder affects the charge pumping. As a result, we show that the quantized pumped charge is robust against the small disorder and find that the pumped charge increases in the intermediate disorder region. We also examine the doping effects on the charge pumping and show that the remnant of the quantized pumped charge at zero doping can be detected. Our results show that the real-time evolution is a useful technique for detecting the topological properties of the systems with no bulk gap and/or disorders.
We study the time-development processes of spin and charge transport phenomena in a topological Dirac semimetal attached to a ferromagnetic insulator with a precessing magnetization. Compared to conventional normal metals, topological Dirac semimetals manifest a large inverse spin Hall effect when a spin current is pumped from the attached ferromagnetic insulator. It is shown that the induced charge current is semi-quantized, i.e., it depends only on the distance between the two Dirac points in momentum space and hardly depends on the disorder strength when the system remains in the topologica…
Chiral anomaly, a non-conservation of chiral charge pumped by the topological nontrivial gauge fields, has been predicted to exist in Weyl semimetals. However, until now, the experimental signature of this effect exclusively relies on the observation of negative longitudinal magnetoresistance at low temperatures. Here, we report the field-modulated chiral charge pumping process and valley diffusion in Cd3As2. Apart from the conventional negative magnetoresistance, we observe an unusual nonlocal response with negative field dependence up to room temperature, originating from the diffusion of va…
Spin-momentum locking in Weyl semimetals correlates the orbital motion of electrons with background magnetic textures. We show here that the dynamics of a magnetic texture in a magnetic Weyl semimetal induces a pumped electric current that is free from Joule heating. This pumped current can be regarded as a Hall current induced by axial electromagnetic fields equivalent to the magnetic texture. Taking a magnetic domain wall as a test case, we demonstrate that a moving domain wall generates a pumping current corresponding to the localized charge.
We demonstrate electrical magnetization switching and spin pumping in magnetically doped Weyl semimetals. The Weyl semimetal is a new class of topological semimetals, known to have nontrivial coupling between the charge and the magnetization due to the chiral anomaly. By solving the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation for a multilayer structure of a Weyl semimetal, an insulator and a metal whilst taking the charge-magnetization coupling into account, magnetization dynamics is analyzed. It is shown that the magnetization dynamics can be driven by the electric voltage. Consequently, switching of th…
The linear band crossings of 3D Dirac and Weyl semimetals are characterized by a charge chirality, the parallel or anti-parallel locking of electron spin to its momentum. Such materials are believed to exhibit a ${\bf E} \cdot {\bf B}$ chiral magnetic effect that is associated with the near conservation of chiral charge. Here, we use magneto-terahertz spectroscopy to study epitaxial Cd$_3$As$_2$ films and extract their conductivities $σ(ω)$ as a function of ${\bf E} \cdot {\bf B}$. As field is applied, we observe a remarkably sharp Drude response that rises out of the broader background. Its a…
Thermoelectrics are promising by directly generating electricity from waste heat. However, (sub-)room-temperature thermoelectrics have been a long-standing challenge due to vanishing electronic entropy at low temperatures. Topological materials offer a new avenue for energy harvesting applications. Recent theories predicted that topological semimetals at the quantum limit can lead to a large, non-saturating thermopower and a quantized thermoelectric Hall conductivity approaching a universal value. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the non-saturating thermopower and quantized thermoelectric H…
The photovoltaic effect in a Weyl semimetal due to the adiabatic quantum phase is studied. We particularly focus on the case in which an external ac electric field is applied to the semimetal. In this setup, we show that a photocurrent is induced by the ac electric field. By considering a generalized Weyl Hamiltonian with nonlinear terms, it is shown that the photocurrent is induced by circularly, rather than linearly, polarized light. This photovoltaic current can be understood as an emergent electromagnetic induction in the momentum space; the Weyl node is a magnetic monopole in the momentum…
Solids with topologically robust electronic states exhibit unusual electronic and optical transport properties that do not exist in other materials. A particularly interesting example is chiral charge pumping, the so-called chiral anomaly, in recently discovered topological Weyl semimetals, where simultaneous application of parallel DC electric and magnetic fields creates an imbalance in the number of carriers of opposite topological charge (chirality). Here, using time-resolved terahertz measurements on the Weyl semimetal TaAs in a magnetic field, we optically interrogate the chiral anomaly b…
Exploration of the novel relationship between magnetic order and topological semimetals has received enormous interest in a wide range of both fundamental and applied research. Here we predict that soft ferromagnetic (FM) material EuB6 can achieve multiple topological semimetal phases by simply tuning the direction of the magnetic moment. Explicitly, EuB6 is a topological nodal-line semimetal when the moment is aligned along the [001] direction, and it evolves into a Weyl semimetal with three pairs of Weyl nodes by rotating the moment to the [111] direction. Interestingly, we identify a novel …
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…
Studying many-body versions of Landau-Zener-like problems of non-interacting electrons in the Slater formalism for several $k \cdot p$ models representing Weyl and Dirac semimetals, we systematically include non-adiabatic corrections to a quantum limit of chiral charge pumping in these models. In this paper, we show that relative homotopy invariant [Sun et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 106402 (2018)] and Euler class invariant [Bouhon et al., Nat. Phys. 16, 1137 (2020)] non-trivially manifest in the non-adiabatic corrections to the quantum limit of chiral charge pumping. These corrections could af…
This paper investigates a scheme for quantized charge pumping based on single-parameter modulation. The device was realized in an AlGaAs-GaAs gated nanowire. We find a remarkable robustness of the quantized regime against variations in the driving signal, which increases with applied rf power. This feature together with its simple configuration makes this device a potential module for a scalable source of quantized current.
So far, the circular photogalvanic effect (CPGE) is the only possible quantized signal in Weyl semimetals. With inversion and mirror symmetries broken, Weyl and multifold fermions in band structures with opposite chiralities can stay at different energies and generate a net topological charge. Such kind of net topological charge can present as a quantized signal in the circular polarized light induced injection current. According to current theoretical understanding, RhSi and its counterparts are believed to be the most promising candidate for the experimental observation of the quantized CPGE…
We study the quantized charge pumping of higher-order topological insulators (HOTIs) with edge-corner correspondences based on the combination of the rotation of in-plane magnetic field and the quantum spin Hall effect. A picture of a specific charge pumping process is uncovered with the help of the non-equilibrium Green's function method. Significantly, we demonstrate that the quantized charge pumping current is achieved without the participation of bulk states, and the charges move along the boundary of the sample. Furthermore, the effects of external parameters on the pumping current is als…
We investigate a recently developed scheme for quantized charge pumping based on single-parameter modulation. The device was realized in an AlGaAl-GaAs gated nanowire. It has been shown theoretically that non-adiabaticity is fundamentally required to realize single-parameter pumping, while in previous multi-parameter pumping schemes it caused unwanted and less controllable currents. In this paper we demonstrate experimentally the constructive and destructive role of non-adiabaticity by analysing the pumping current over a broad frequency range.
Nodal-Line Semimetals with Non-Quantized Berry Phase
Nanjing University（南京大学）；National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University（南京大学固体微结构物理国家重点实验室、物理学院和先进微结构协同创新中心）；Jiangsu Physical Science Research Center and Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Quantum Information Science and Technology, Nanjing University（南京大学江苏物理科学研究中心和江苏省量子信息科学与技术重点实验室）
Controlled charge pumping in an AlGaAs/GaAs gated nanowire by single-parameter modulation is studied experimentally and theoretically. Transfer of integral multiples of the elementary charge per modulation cycle is clearly demonstrated. A simple theoretical model shows that such a quantized current can be generated via loading and unloading of a dynamic quasi-bound state. It demonstrates that non-adiabatic blockade of unwanted tunnel events can obliterate the requirement of having at least two phase-shifted periodic signals to realize quantized pumping. The simple configuration without multipl…
We study the quantum spin pumping of an antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 chain with competing exchange interactions. We show that spatially periodic potential modulated in space and time acts as a quantum spin pump. In our model system, an applied electric field causes a spin gap to its critical ground state by introducing bond-alternation exchange interactions. We study quantum spin pumping at different quantized magnetization states and also explain physically the presence and absence of quantum spin pumping at different fractionally quantized magnetization states.
We demonstrate single-electron pumping in a gate-defined carbon nanotube double quantum dot. By periodic modulation of the potentials of the two quantum dots we move the system around charge triple points and transport exactly one electron or hole per cycle. We investigate the pumping as a function of the modulation frequency and amplitude and observe good current quantization up to frequencies of 18 MHz where rectification effects cause the mechanism to break down.
We report spin-to-charge and charge-to-spin conversion at room temperature in heterostructure devices that interface an archetypal Dirac semimetal, Cd3As2, with a metallic ferromagnet, Ni0.80Fe0.20 (permalloy). The spin-charge interconversion is detected by both spin torque ferromagnetic resonance and ferromagnetic resonance driven spin pumping. Analysis of the symmetric and anti-symmetric components of the mixing voltage in spin torque ferromagnetic resonance and the frequency and power dependence of the spin pumping signal show that the behavior of these processes is consistent with previous…
We present a realization of quantized charge pumping. A lateral quantum dot is defined by metallic split gates in a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure. A surface acoustic wave whose wavelength is twice the dot length is used to pump single electrons through the dot at a frequency f=3GHz. The pumped current shows a regular pattern of quantization at values I=nef over a range of gate voltage and wave amplitude settings. The observed values of n, the number of electrons transported per wave cycle, are determined by the number of electronic states in the quantum dot brought into resonance with the fermi …
We show how a dc current can be generated in a Hall bar without applying a bias voltage. The Hall resistance $R_H$ that corresponds to this pumped current is quantized, just as in the usual integer quantum Hall effect (IQHE). In contrast with the IQHE, however, the longitudinal resistance $R_{xx}$ does not vanish on the plateaus, but equals the Hall resistance. We propose an experimental geometry to measure the pumped current and verify the predicted behavior of $R_H$ and $R_{xx}$.
We study single-parameter quantized charge pumping via a semiconductor quantum dot in high magnetic fields. The quantum dot is defined between two top gates in an AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructure. Application of an oscillating voltage to one of the gates leads to pumped current plateaus in the gate characteristic, corresponding to controlled transfer of integer multiples of electrons per cycle. In a perpendicular-to-plane magnetic field the plateaus become more pronounced indicating an improved current quantization. Current quantization is sustained up to magnetic fields where full spin polarizatio…
Precise manipulation of individual charge carriers in nanoelectronic circuits underpins practical applications of their most basic quantum property --- the universality and invariance of the elementary charge. A charge pump generates a net current from periodic external modulation of parameters controlling a nanostructure connected to source and drain leads; in the regime of quantized pumping the current varies in steps of $q_e f$ as function of control parameters, where $q_e$ is the electron charge and $f$ is the frequency of modulation. In recent years, robust and accurate quantized charge p…
Adiabatic pumping of electrons induced by surface acoustic waves (SAWs) in a ballistic quasi-1D quantum channel is considered using an exactly solvable tight-binding model for non-interacting electrons. The single-electron degrees of freedom, responsible for acoustoelectric current quantization, are related to the transmission resonances. We study the influence of experimentally controllable parameters (SAW power, gate voltage, source-drain bias, amplitude and phase of a secondary SAW beam) on the plateau-like structure of the acoustoelectric current. The results are consistent with existing e…
Two quantized charge pumps are operated in parallel. The total current generated is shown to be far more accurate than the current produced with just one pump operating at a higher frequency. With the application of a perpendicular magnetic field the accuracy of quantization is shown to be $< $20 ppm for a current of $108.9 $pA. The scheme for parallel pumping presented in this work has applications in quantum information processing, the generation of single photons in pairs and bunches, neural networking and the development of a quantum standard for electrical current. All these applications …
We report a theoretical study of the quantized spin pump in a traditional two-parameter quantum pump device that is based on the helical edge states of a quantum spin Hall insulator. By introducing two time-dependent magnetizations out of phase as the pumping parameters, we found that when the Fermi energy resides in the energy gap opened by magnetization, an integer number of charges or spins can be pumped out in a pumping cycle and ascribed to the possible topological interface state born in between the two pumping potentials. The quantized pump current can be fully spin-polarized, spin-unpo…
We show that under the effect of an external electric field and a gradient of chemical potential, a topological electric current can be induced in Weyl semimetals without inversion and mirror symmetries. We derive analytic expressions for the nonlinear conductivity tensor and show that it is nearly quantized for small tilting when the Fermi levels are close to the Weyl nodes. When the van Hove point is much larger than the largest Fermi level, the band structure is described by two linearly dispersing Weyl fermions with opposite chirality. In this case, the electrochemical response is fully qu…
Adiabatically pumped charge, carried by non-interacting electrons through a quantum dot in a turnstile geometry, is studied as function of the strength of the two modulating potentials (related to the conductances of the two point-contacts to the leads) and of the phase shift between them. It is shown that the magnitude and sign of the pumped charge are determined by the relative position and orientation of the closed contour traversed by the system in the parameter plane, and the transmission peaks (or resonances) in that plane. Integer values (in units of the electronic charge $e$) of the pu…
We consider quantum charge pumping of electrons across a superconducting double barrier structure in the adiabatic limit. The superconducting barriers are assumed to be reflection-less so that an incident electron on the barrier can either tunnel through it or Andreev reflect from it. In this structure, quantum charge pumping can be achieved (a) by modulating the amplitudes, $Δ_1$ and $Δ_2$ of the two superconducting gaps or alternatively, (b) by a periodic modulation of the order parameter phases, $ϕ_1$ and $ϕ_2$ of the superconducting barriers. In the former case, we show that the supercondu…
We find that the vortex bound states in superconducting topological semimetals are gapless owing to topological massless excitations in their normal states. We demonstrate this universal result in a variety of semimetals including Dirac and Weyl semimetals, threefold degenerate spin-1 fermions, spin-3/2 Rarita-Schwinger-Weyl fermion semimetals and other exotic fermion semimetals. The formation of these gapless bound states are closely related to their Andreev specular reflection and propagating Andreev modes in $π$ phase superconductor-normal metal-superconductor (SNS) junctions. We further de…
Semiconducting nanowires (NWs) are a versatile, highly tunable material platform at the heart of many new developments in nanoscale and quantum physics. Here, we demonstrate charge pumping, i.e., the controlled transport of individual electrons through an InAs NW quantum dot (QD) device at frequencies up to $1.3\,$GHz. The QD is induced electrostatically in the NW by a series of local bottom gates in a state of the art device geometry. A periodic modulation of a single gate is enough to obtain a dc current proportional to the frequency of the modulation. The dc bias, the modulation amplitude a…
We optimize the operation of single-electron charge pumps using full counting statistics techniques. To this end, we evaluate the statistics of pumped charge on a wide range of driving frequencies using Floquet theory, focusing here on the current and the noise. For charge pumps controlled by one or two gate voltages, we demonstrate that our theoretical framework may lead to enhanced device performance. Specifically, by optimizing the driving parameters, we predict a significant increase in the frequencies for which a quantized current can be produced. For adiabatic two-parameter pumps, we exp…
The insertion of a local magnetic flux, as the one created by a thin solenoid, plays an important role in gedanken experiments of quantum Hall physics. By combining Floquet engineering of artificial magnetic fields with the ability of single-site addressing in quantum-gas microscopes, we propose a scheme for the realization of such local solenoid-type magnetic fields in optical lattices. We show that it can be employed to manipulate and probe elementary excitations of a topological Chern insulator. This includes quantized adiabatic charge pumping along tailored paths inside the bulk, as well a…
We study longitudinal transport in Weyl semimetal nanowires, both in the absence and in the presence of a magnetic flux threading the nanowires. We identify two qualitatively different regimes of transport with respect to the chemical potential in the nanowires. In the "surface regime", for low doping, most of the conductance occurs through the Fermi-arc surface states, and it rises in steps of one quantum of conductance as a function of the chemical potential; furthermore, with varying flux the conductance changes in steps of one quantum of conductance with characteristic Fabry-Pérot interfer…
From the Kubo formula for transport in a tilted Weyl semimetal we calculate the absorptive part of the dynamic conductivity for both right and left handed circular polarized light. These depend on the real part of the longitudinal conductivity and the imaginary part of the transverse (Hall) conductivity. We include the effect of the chiral anomaly which pumps charge from negative to positive chirality node when the usual ${\bs E}\cdot{\bs B}$ term is included in the electrodynamics and obtain analytic expressions. To calculate the Hall angle we further provide expressions for the imaginary par…
An exotic anomalous plasmon mode is found in strained Weyl semimetals utilizing the topological Landau Fermi liquid and chiral kinetic theories, in which quasiparticle interactions are modeled by long-range Coulomb and residual short-range interactions. The gapped collective mode is derived from the dynamical charge pumping between the bulk and the surface and behaves like $k_{\rm F}^{-1}$. The charge oscillations are accurately determined by the coupling between the induced electric field and the background pseudofields. This novel mode unidirectionally disperses along the pseudomagnetic fiel…
We propose several novel physical phenomena based on nano-scale helical wires. Applying a static electric field transverse to the helical wire induces a metal to insulator transition, with the band gap determined by the applied voltage. Similar idea can be applied to "geometrically" constructing one-dimensional systems with arbitrary external potential. With a quadrupolar electrode configuration, the electric field could rotate in the transverse plane, leading to a quantized dc charge current proportional to the frequency of the rotation. Such a device could be used as a new standard for the h…
In mesoscopic physics, the application of a time-periodic drive leads to novel transport behaviour, which is absent in the static regimes. Here we consider a quantum pumping protocol, such that the quasiparticles of Weyl/multi-Weyl and nodal-line semimetals are subjected to a time-periodic rectangular potential well. The presence of an oscillating potential of frequency $ω$ creates equispaced Floquet side-bands with spacing $\hbar ω$. As a result, a Fano resonance is observed when the difference in the Fermi energy (i.e., the energy of the incident quasiparticle), and the energy of one of the …
Parity Anomalous Semimetal with Minimal Conductivity Induced by an In-Plane Magnetic Field
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.（华为技术有限公司）；School of Sciences, Great Bay University（大湾区大学理学院）；Department of Physics and State Key Laboratory of Optical Quantum Materials, The University of Hong Kong（香港大学物理系及光学量子材料国家重点实验室）
The sharply quantized transport observed in the integer quantum Hall effect can be explained via a simple one-dimensional model with a time-periodic, adiabatically varying potential in which electronic charge is pumped from one side of the system to the other. This so-called `Thouless pump' captures the topological physics of the quantum Hall effect using the notion of dimensional reduction: The time-varying potential mathematically maps onto a momentum coordinate in a conceptual second dimension. Importantly, this assumes an electronic system in equilibrium and in its ground state, that is, w…
Floquet engineering, the concept of tailoring a system by a periodic drive, is increasingly exploited to design and manipulate topological phases of matter. In this work, we study periodically driven higher-order topological Dirac semimetals associated with a $k$-dependent quantized quadrupole moment by applying circularly polarized light. The undriven Dirac semimetals feature gapless higher-order hinge Fermi arc states which are the consequence of the higher-order topology of the Dirac nodes. Floquet Weyl semimetal phases with hybrid-order topology, characterized by both a $k$-dependent quant…
We propose a simple scheme to construct a model whose Fermi surface is comprised of crossing-line nodes. The Hamiltonian consists of a normal hopping term and an additional term which is odd under the mirror reflection. The line nodes appear along the mirror-invariant planes, where each line node carries the quantized Berry magnetic flux. We explicitly construct a model with the $N$-fold rotational symmetry, where the $2N$ line nodes merge at the north and south poles. Photoirradiation induces a topological phase transition. When we apply photoirradiation along the $k_z$ axis, there emerge poi…
Quantum pumping in closed systems is considered. We explain that the Kubo formula contains all the physically relevant ingredients for the calculation of the pumped charge ($Q$) within the framework of linear response theory. The relation to the common formulations of adiabatic transport and ``geometric magnetism" is clarified. We distinguish between adiabatic and dissipative contributions to $Q$. On the one hand we observe that adiabatic pumping does not have to be quantized. On the other hand we define circumstances in which quantized adiabatic pumping holds as an approximation. The deviatio…
Recent theoretical calculations, demonstrating that quantized charge transfer due to adiabatically modulated potentials in mesoscopic devices can result purely from the interference of the electron wave functions (without invoking electron-electron interactions) are reviewed: (1) A new formula is derived for the pumped charge Q (per period); It reproduces the Brouwer formula without a bias, and also yields the effect of the modulating potential on the Landauer formula in the presence of a bias. (2) For a turnstile geometry, with time-dependent gate voltages V_L(t) and V_R(t), the magnitude and…
Electronic transport in Weyl semimetals is quite extraordinary due to the topological property of the chiral anomaly generating the charge pumping between two distant Weyl nodes with opposite chiralities under parallel electric and magnetic fields. Here, we develop a full nonequilibrium quantum transport theory of the chiral anomaly, based on the fact that the chiral charge pumping is essentially nothing but the Bloch oscillation. Specifically, by using the Keldysh nonequilibrium Green function method, it is shown that there is a rich structure in the chiral anomaly transport, including the ne…
Single electron pumps are set to revolutionize electrical metrology by enabling the ampere to be re-defined in terms of the elementary charge of an electron. Pumps based on lithographically-fixed tunnel barriers in mesoscopic metallic systems and normal/superconducting hybrid turnstiles can reach very small error rates, but only at MHz pumping speeds corresponding to small currents of the order 1 pA. Tunable barrier pumps in semiconductor structures have been operated at GHz frequencies, but the theoretical treatment of the error rate is more complex and only approximate predictions are availa…
