Optical gyrotropy from axion electrodynamics in momentum space

Abstract

Several emergent phenomena and phases in solids arise from configurations of the electronic Berry phase in momentum space that are similar to gauge field configurations in real space such as magnetic monopoles. We show that the momentum-space analogue of the "axion electrodynamics" term $\mathbf{E}\cdot \mathbf{B}$ plays a fundamental role in a unified theory of Berry-phase contributions to optical gyrotropy in time-reversal invariant materials and the chiral magnetic effect. The Berry-phase mechanism predicts that the rotatory power along the optic axes of a crystal must sum to zero, a constraint beyond that stipulated by point group symmetry, but observed to high accuracy in classic experimental observations on $\alpha$-quartz. Furthermore, the Berry mechanism provides a microscopic basis for the surface conductance at the interface between gyrotropic and nongyrotropic media.

4 pages + refs + 2 pages supplemental material; 2 figures; (version 2) added more TaAs references and fixed a sign error in early eq. (3) as published

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• Topological Field Theory of Time-Reversal Invariant Insulators
• Discovery of a Weyl Fermion Semimetal and Topological Fermi Arcs
• Experimental discovery of Weyl semimetal TaAs
• Theoretical Discovery/Prediction: Weyl Semimetal states in the TaAs material (TaAs, NbAs, NbP, TaP) class
• Weyl semimetal phase in non-centrosymmetric transition metal monophosphides
• Topological response in Weyl semimetals and the chiral anomaly
• Quantum spin Hall effect of light
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• Chiral magnetic effect in two-band lattice model of Weyl semimetal
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Cited by in corpus (42)

• Evidence for Magnetic Weyl Fermions in a Correlated Metal
• Giant anisotropic nonlinear optical response in transition metal monopnictide Weyl semimetals
• Electrical Manipulation of a Topological Antiferromagnetic State
• Chiral anomaly as origin of planar Hall effect in Weyl semimetals
• Photocurrents in Weyl semimetals
• Gyrotropic magnetic effect and the magnetic moment on the Fermi surface
• Chiral magnetic effect and natural optical activity in (Weyl) metals
• RKKY interaction of magnetic impurities in Dirac and Weyl semimetals
• Enhancement of bulk photovoltaic effect in topological insulators
• Nonreciprocal Directional Dichroism Induced by the Quantum Metric Dipole
• Semi-classical wave packet dynamics in non-uniform electric fields
• Observation of Weyl fermions in a magnetic non-centrosymmetric crystal
• Ultrafast Microscopy of a Plasmonic Spin Skyrmion
• Berry phase theory of planar Hall effect in Topological Insulators
• Giant optical activity and Kerr effect in type-I and type-II Weyl semimetals
• On electrodynamics of chiral matter
• 3D Dirac cone carrier dynamics in Na3Bi and Cd3As2
• Detecting Chiral Magnetic Effect by Lattice Dynamics
• Anatomy of chiral magnetic effect in and out of equilibrium
• Chirality-dependent planar Hall effect in inhomogeneous Weyl semimetals
• Multiple Weyl fermions in the noncentrosymmetric semimetal LaAlSi
• Chiral anomaly induced nonlinear Hall effect in multi-Weyl semimetals
• Giant effective damping of octupole oscillation in an antiferromagnetic Weyl semimetal
• Magneto-transport phenomena of type-I multi-Weyl semimetals in co-planar setups
• Berry phase jumps and giant nonreciprocity in Dirac quantum dots
• Planar Thermal Hall Effect in Weyl Semimetals
• Optical activity of quantum wells
• Effect of chirality imbalance on Hall transport of PrRhC${}_2$
• Transverse thermopower in Dirac and Weyl semimetals
• Revisiting magnetotransport in Weyl semimetals
• Viscous Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory for topological electromagnetic phases of matter
• Quantum oscillations and nontrivial topological state in a compensated semimetal TaP2
• Anomaly-induced sound absorption in Weyl semimetals
• Axion instability and non-linear electromagnetic effect
• Quantized electrochemical transport in Weyl semimetals
• Dichroism as a probe for parity-breaking phases of spin-orbit coupled metals
• Plasmonic quantum nonlinear Hall effect in noncentrosymmetric 2D materials
• Mirror anomaly and anomalous Hall effect in type-I Dirac semimetals
• Transmission/reflection coefficients and Faraday/Kerr rotations as a function of applied magnetic fields in spin-orbit coupled Dirac metals
• Vector Optical Activity in the Weyl Semimetal TaAs
• Nonlocal transport phenomena in Weyl metals beyond the mesoscopic scale
• Chiral Anomaly Induced Transverse Planar Transport Phenomena in Three Dimensional Spin-Orbit Coupled Metals