Weyl nodes as topological defects of the Wannier-Stark ladder: From surface to bulk Fermi arcs
arXiv:1608.05531 · doi:10.1038/ncomms13489
Abstract
A hallmark of Weyl semimetal is the existence of surface Fermi arcs connecting two surface-projected Weyl nodes with opposite chiralities. An intriguing question is what determines the connectivity of surface Fermi arcs, when multiple pairs of Weyl nodes are present. To answer this question, we first show that the locations of surface Fermi arcs are predominantly determined by the condition that the Zak phase integrated along the normal direction to the surface is . More importantly, the Zak phase can reveal the peculiar topological structure of Weyl semimetal directly in the bulk. Here, we show that the non-trivial winding of the Zak phase around each projected Weyl node manifests itself as a topological defect of the Wannier-Stark ladder, the energy eigenstates emerging under an electric field. Remarkably, this structure leads to "bulk Fermi arcs," i.e., open line segments in the bulk momentum spectra. It is argued that bulk Fermi arcs should exist in conjunction with the surface counterparts to conserve the Weyl fermion number under an electric field, which is supported by explicit numerical evidence.
arXiv comment9 pages, 5 figures
References in corpus (34)
- Berry Phase Effects on Electronic Properties
- Electronic Structure of Pyrochlore Iridates: From Topological Dirac Metal to Mott Insulator
- Discovery of a Weyl Fermion Semimetal and Topological Fermi Arcs
- Weyl Semimetal in a Topological Insulator Multilayer
- Theoretical Discovery/Prediction: Weyl Semimetal states in the TaAs material (TaAs, NbAs, NbP, TaP) class
- Chern semi-metal and Quantized Anomalous Hall Effect in HgCr2Se4
- Chiral Anomaly and Classical Negative Magnetoresistance of Weyl Metals
- Observation of Weyl nodes in TaAs
- Discovery of a Weyl Fermion semimetal state in NbAs
- Topological response in Weyl semimetals and the chiral anomaly
- Quantum Hall effects in a Weyl Semi-Metal: possible application in pyrochlore Iridates
- Signatures of the Adler-Bell-Jackiw chiral anomaly in a Weyl Fermion semimetal
- Recent developments in transport phenomena in Weyl semimetals
- Quantum Oscillations from Surface Fermi-Arcs in Weyl and Dirac Semi-Metals
- The Zak phase and the existence of edge states in graphene
- Semiconductor Superlattices: A model system for nonlinear transport
- Dirac vs. Weyl in topological insulators: Adler-Bell-Jackiw anomaly in transport phenomena
- Transport evidence for Fermi-arc mediated chirality transfer in the Dirac semimetal CdAs
- Time-reversal invariant realization of the Weyl semimetal phase
- Edge states and the bulk-boundary correspondence in Dirac Hamiltonians
- Chiral Anomaly and Diffusive Magnetotransport in Weyl Metals
- Synthetic 3D Spin-Orbit Coupling
- Weyl points in three-dimensional optical lattices: synthetic magnetic monopoles in momentum space
- Quantum transport in ultracold atoms
- Correlation effects on 3D topological phases: from bulk to boundary
- Helical Fermi arcs and surface states in time-reversal invariant Weyl semimetals
- Coherent wave-packet evolution in coupled bands
- Dirac-Weyl fermions with arbitrary spin in two-dimensional optical superlattices
- Tunable topological Weyl semimetal from simple cubic lattices with staggered fluxes
- Quantum oscillations from generic surface Fermi arcs and bulk chiral modes in Weyl semimetals
- Noncommutative geometry and nonabelian Berry phase in the wave-packet dynamics of Bloch electrons
- Simulating and exploring Weyl semimetal physics with cold atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice
- Constructing a Weyl semimetal by stacking one dimensional topological phases
- Direct manifestation of band topology in the winding number of the Wannier-Stark ladder
Cited by in corpus (10)
- Surface and 3D quantum Hall effects from engineering of exceptional points in nodal-line semimetals
- Soft self-assembly of Weyl materials for light and sound
- Weyl solitons in three-dimensional optical lattices
- Fu-Kane-Mele monopoles in semimetals
- Floquet Topological Semimetal with Nodal Helix
- Floquet-Bloch Theory for Nonperturbative Response to a Static Drive
- Anomalous transport in a topological Wannier-Stark ladder
- Topological -wave Superconductivity and Nodal Line-Arc Intersections in Weyl Semimetals
- A semiclassical approach to surface Fermi arcs in Weyl semimetals
- Influence of anisotropy, tilt and pairing of Weyl nodes: The Weyl semimetals TaAs, TaP, NbAs and NbP