Quantum transport in 3D Weyl semimetals: Is there a metal-insulator transition?

Abstract

We calculate the transport properties of three-dimensional Weyl fermions in a disordered environment. The resulting conductivity depends only on the Fermi energy and the scattering rate. First we study the conductivity at the spectral node for a fixed scattering rate and obtain a continuous transition from an insulator at weak disorder to a metal at stronger disorder. In the self-consistent Born approximation the scattering rate depends on the Fermi energy. Then it is crucial that the limits of the conductivity for a vanishing Fermi energy and a vanishing scattering rate do not commute. As a result, there is also metallic behavior in the phase with vanishing scattering rate and only a quantum critical point remains as an insulating state.

9 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Single particle excitations in disordered Weyl fluids
• Robust quantum transport at particle-hole symmetry
• Short note on the density of states in 3D Weyl semimetals
• Nonlocal electrodynamics in Weyl semi-metals
• Corrections to the self-consistent Born approximation for Weyl fermions
• Ballistic transport in disordered Dirac and Weyl semimetals