Emergent Electromagnetic Induction and Adiabatic Charge Pumping in Weyl Semimetals

Abstract

The photovoltaic effect in a Weyl semimetal due to the adiabatic quantum phase is studied. We particularly focus on the case in which an external ac electric field is applied to the semimetal. In this setup, we show that a photocurrent is induced by the ac electric field. By considering a generalized Weyl Hamiltonian with nonlinear terms, it is shown that the photocurrent is induced by circularly, rather than linearly, polarized light. This photovoltaic current can be understood as an emergent electromagnetic induction in the momentum space; the Weyl node is a magnetic monopole in the momentum space, of which the electric field is induced by the circular motion. This result is distinct from conventional photovoltaic effects, and potentially useful for experimentally identifying Weyl semimetals in chiral crystals.

5 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (5)

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• The Chiral Magnetic Effect
• Weyl semimetal phase in non-centrosymmetric transition metal monophosphides
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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Weyl Exceptional Rings in a Three-Dimensional Dissipative Cold Atomic Gas
• Photocurrents in Weyl semimetals
• The Berry curvature dipole in Weyl semimetal materials: an ab initio study
• Topological Hopf and chain link semimetal states and their application to Co2MnGa (Theory and Materials Prediction)
• Terahertz electric field driven electric currents and ratchet effects in graphene
• Anomalous Hall effects beyond Berry magnetic fields in a Weyl metal phase