New Quantum Transition in Weyl Semimetals with Correlated Disorder

Abstract

A Weyl semimetal denotes an electronic phase of solids in which two bands cross linearly. In this paper we study the effect of a spatially correlated disorder on such a phase. Using a renormalization group analysis, we show that in three dimensions, three scenarios are possible depending on the disorder correlations. A standard transition is recovered for short range correlations. For disorder decaying slower than $1/r^2$, the Weyl semimetal is unstable to any weak disorder and no transition persists. In between, a new phase transition occurs. This transition still separates a disordered metal from a semi-metal, but with a new critical behavior that we analyze to two-loop order.

6 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Anderson Transitions
• Rare region effects dominate weakly disordered 3D Dirac points
• Diffusive Quantum Criticality in Three Dimensional Disordered Dirac Semimetals
• Unconventional localisation transition in high dimensions
• Effective field theory of the disordered Weyl semimetal

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Weak Localization and Antilocalization in Topological Materials with Impurity Spin-Orbit Interactions
• Quantum Transport in Weyl Semimetal Thin Films in the Presence of Spin-Orbit Coupled Impurities
• Scaling behavior of the localization length for TE waves at critical incidence on short-range correlated stratified random media
• Boundary critical behavior of the Gross-Neveu-Yukawa model
• Correction exponents in the chiral Heisenberg model at $1/N^2$: singular contributions and operator mixing