Universal optical conductivity of a disordered Weyl semimetal

Abstract

Topological Weyl semimetals, besides manifesting chiral anomaly, can also accommodate a disorder-driven unconventional quantum phase transition into a metallic phase. A fundamentally and practically important question in this regard concerns an experimentally measurable quantity that can clearly distinguish these two phases. We show that the optical conductivity while serving this purpose can also play the role of a bonafide order parameter across such disorder-driven semimetal-metal quantum phase transition by virtue of displaying distinct scaling behavior in semimetallic and metallic phases, as well as inside the quantum critical fan supporting a non-Fermi liquid. We demonstrate that the correction to dielectric constant and optical conductivity in a dirty Weyl semimetal due to weak disorder is independent of the actual nature of point-like impurity scatterers. Therefore, optical conductivity can be used as an experimentally measurable quantity to study the critical properties and to pin the universality class of the disorder-driven quantum phase transition in Weyl semimetals.

5.5 Pages and 1 Figure (Supplementary: 7.5 Pages and 1 Figure: Published version, new references, added discussion

References in corpus (15)

• Colloquium: Topological Band Theory
• A self-consistent theory for graphene transport
• Chiral anomaly and transport in Weyl metals
• Coulomb interaction, ripples, and the minimal conductivity of graphene
• Rare region effects dominate weakly disordered 3D Dirac points
• Electron scattering in tantalum monoarsenide
• Disorder effect on 3-dimensional $Z_2$ quantum spin Hall systems
• Carrier screening, transport, and relaxation in 3D Dirac semimetals
• Diffusive Quantum Criticality in Three Dimensional Disordered Dirac Semimetals
• Conductivity of interacting massless Dirac particles in graphene: Collisionless regime
• Effective field theory of the disordered Weyl semimetal
• Quantum phases of interacting electrons in three-dimensional dirty Dirac semimetals
• Stability of Weyl metals under impurity scattering
• Charge transport in gapless chiral electron systems with arbitrary band dispersion
• A strongly robust Weyl fermion semimetal state in Ta${}_3$S${}_2$

Cited by in corpus (60)

• Weyl and Dirac Semimetals in Three Dimensional Solids
• Topological superconductivity of spin-3/2 carriers in a three-dimensional doped Luttinger semimetal
• Global Phase Diagram of a Dirty Weyl Liquid and Emergent Superuniversality
• Dissolution of topological Fermi arcs in a dirty Weyl semimetal
• Transport and optics at the node in a nodal loop semimetal
• Resonant photovoltaic effect in doped magnetic semiconductors
• On the disorder-driven quantum transition in three-dimensional relativistic metals
• High Surface Conductivity of Fermi Arc Electrons in Weyl semimetals
• Rare regions and avoided quantum criticality in disordered Weyl semimetals and superconductors
• Tilted disordered Weyl semimetals
• Global phase diagram of a three dimensional dirty topological superconductor
• Electron Transport in Dirac and Weyl Semimetals
• From weak to strong disorder in Weyl semimetals: Self-consistent Born approximation
• Disorder Induced Phase Transitions of Type-II Weyl Semimetal
• Dynamical correlation functions and the related physical effects in three-dimensional Weyl/Dirac semimetals
• Dirty higher-order Dirac semimetal: Quantum criticality and bulk-boundary correspondence
• New Quantum Transition in Weyl Semimetals with Correlated Disorder
• Chiral Hall effect in strained Weyl semimetals
• AC conductivity for a holographic Weyl Semimetal
• Quantum phases of disordered three-dimensional Majorana-Weyl fermions
• Role of four-fermion interaction and impurity in the states of two-dimensional semi-Dirac materials
• Stability of two-dimensional asymmetric materials with a quadratic band crossing point under four-fermion interaction and impurity scattering
• Disordered fermionic quantum critical points
• Breakdown of universality in three-dimensional Dirac semimetals with random impurities
• Optical conductivity of an interacting Weyl liquid in the collisionless regime
• Condition for the emergence of a bulk Fermi arc in disordered Dirac-fermion systems
• Disorder-driven quantum transition in relativistic semimetals: functional renormalization via the porous medium equation
• Quantum phase transition and unusual critical behavior in multi-Weyl semimetals
• Superconductivity in two-dimensional disordered Dirac semimetals
• Stability of Weyl semimetals with quasiperiodic disorder
• Multifractality at the Weyl semimetal-diffusive metal transition for generic disorder
• Topological Anomalous Skin Effect in Weyl Superconductors
• Fermi arcs and surface criticality in dirty Dirac materials
• Dynamical density and spin response of Fermi arcs and their consequences for Weyl semimetals
• Competition between disorder and interaction effects in 3D Weyl semimetals
• High-Dimensional Disorder-Driven Phenomena in Weyl Semimetals, Semiconductors and Related Systems
• Helical metals and insulators and sheet singularity of inflated Berry monopole
• Emergent space-time supersymmetry at disorder quantum critical point
• Dynamical density response and optical conductivity in topological metals
• Effects of random potentials in three-dimensional quantum electrodynamics
• Collisionless Transport Close to a Fermionic Quantum Critical Point in Dirac Materials
• Cooper instability generated by attractive fermion-fermion interaction in the two-dimensional semi-Dirac semimetals
• Electronic properties and polaronic dynamics of semi-Dirac system within ladder approximation
• Surface quantum critical phenomena in disordered Dirac semimetals
• Optical response in Weyl semimetal in model with gapped Dirac phase
• Nuclear spin relaxation rate near the disorder-driven quantum critical point in Weyl fermion systems
• Fermion-fermion interaction driven phase transitions in rhombohedral trilayer graphene
• Direct topological insulator transitions in three dimensions are destabilized by non-perturbative effects of disorder
• Signature of nodal topology in nonlinear quantum transport across junctions in Weyl and multi-Weyl semimetals
• Electric and chiral response to a pseudoelectric field in Weyl materials
• Critical behavior around the fixed points driven by fermion-fermion interactions and disorders in the nodal-line superconductors
• Singular low-energy states of tilted Dirac semimetals induced by the fermion-fermion interactions
• Disorder correction to the minimal conductance of a nodal-point semimetal
• Mass fluctuations and absorption rates in Dirac materials sensors
• Topological Optical Pseudospin Injection Beyond Weyl Semimetals
• Electron transport in a weakly disordered Weyl semimetal
• Current response to axial gauge fields in noncentrosymmetric magnetic Weyl semimetals
• Boundary critical behavior of the Gross-Neveu-Yukawa model
• Critical fates induced by the interaction competition in three-dimensional tilted Dirac semimetals
• Critical scaling of the AC conductivity and momentum dissipation