Spiraling Fermi arcs in Weyl materials

Abstract

In Weyl materials the valence and conduction electron bands touch at an even number of isolated points in the Brillouin zone. In the vicinity of these points the electron dispersion is linear and may be described by the massless Dirac equation. This results in nontrivial topology of Berry connection curvature. One of its consequences is the existence of peculiar surface electron states whose Fermi surfaces form arcs connecting projections of the Weyl points onto the surface plane. Band bending near the boundary of the crystal also produces surface states. We show that in Weyl materials band bending near the crystal surface gives rise to spiral structure of energy surfaces of arc states. The corresponding Fermi surface has the shape of a spiral that winds about the projection of the Weyl point onto the surface plane. The direction of the winding is determined by the helicity of the Weyl point and the sign of the band bending potential. For close valleys arc state morphology may be understood in terms of avoided crossing of oppositely winding spirals.

5 pages, 4 figues, v2 substantially modified, references updated

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Cited by in corpus (16)

• Topological surface states and Fermi arcs of the noncentrosymmetric Weyl semimetals TaAs, TaP, NbAs, and NbP
• Topological semimetals with Riemann surface states
• Surface plasmon polaritons in topological Weyl semimetals
• Magnetic description of the Fermi arc in type-I and type-II Weyl semimetals
• Infinite Berry Curvature of Weyl Fermi Arcs
• Greens function of semi-infinite Weyl semimetals
• Surface photogalvanic effect in Weyl semimetals
• Surface states in topological semimetal slab geometries
• Fermi arcs formation in Weyl semimetals: the key role of intervalley interaction
• Field theory approach to the quantum transport in Weyl semimetals
• Surface spectra of Weyl semimetals through self-adjoint extensions
• Weyl fermions in cylindrical wires
• Quantum description of Fermi arcs in Weyl semimetals in a magnetic field
• Weyl systems: anomalous transport normally explained
• A semiclassical approach to surface Fermi arcs in Weyl semimetals
• Reconstruction of surface electron spectrum and cyclotron motion in the CDW phase of Weyl semimetals