Axionic Instability of Periodic Weyl-Semimetal Superstructures
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2023
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| _version_ | 1866929319918436352 |
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| author | Li, Tommy Breitkreiz, Maxim |
| author_facet | Li, Tommy Breitkreiz, Maxim |
| contents | Weyl-semimetal superstructures with a spiraling position of a pair of Weyl nodes of opposite chirality can host a chiral-symmetry preserving Fermi-arc metal state, where the chirality is carried by cylindrical Fermi surfaces, electron- and hole-like depending on the chirality. The Fermi surfaces nest at vanishing momentum separation (zero nesting vector) at the electron-hole-compensation energy because the nesting is topologically protected by vanishing spatial overlap of any pair of equal-momentum opposite-chirality states. In this work we show that the nesting and Coulomb interaction drive a spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in such a Fermi arc metal, which leads to a dynamical axion insulator state but without breaking translational symmetry (no charge-density-wave order) as in a conventional Weyl semimetal. As for material realization, we discuss magnetically doped Bi$_2$Se$_3$, for which the Weyl-node positions depend on the order of the magnetic dopands. In this case, the axionic condensation can itself stabilize a spiral order of the magnetization, and hence the spiraling node positions, even if the magnetic interaction is intrinsically ferromagnetic. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2310_10345 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Axionic Instability of Periodic Weyl-Semimetal Superstructures Li, Tommy Breitkreiz, Maxim Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Strongly Correlated Electrons Weyl-semimetal superstructures with a spiraling position of a pair of Weyl nodes of opposite chirality can host a chiral-symmetry preserving Fermi-arc metal state, where the chirality is carried by cylindrical Fermi surfaces, electron- and hole-like depending on the chirality. The Fermi surfaces nest at vanishing momentum separation (zero nesting vector) at the electron-hole-compensation energy because the nesting is topologically protected by vanishing spatial overlap of any pair of equal-momentum opposite-chirality states. In this work we show that the nesting and Coulomb interaction drive a spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in such a Fermi arc metal, which leads to a dynamical axion insulator state but without breaking translational symmetry (no charge-density-wave order) as in a conventional Weyl semimetal. As for material realization, we discuss magnetically doped Bi$_2$Se$_3$, for which the Weyl-node positions depend on the order of the magnetic dopands. In this case, the axionic condensation can itself stabilize a spiral order of the magnetization, and hence the spiraling node positions, even if the magnetic interaction is intrinsically ferromagnetic. |
| title | Axionic Instability of Periodic Weyl-Semimetal Superstructures |
| topic | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Strongly Correlated Electrons |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.10345 |