Phonon-Induced Topological Transition to a Type-II Weyl Semimetal

Abstract

Given the importance of crystal symmetry for the emergence of topological quantum states, we have studied, as exemplified in NbNiTe2, the interplay of crystal symmetry, atomic displacements (lattice vibration), band degeneracy, and band topology. For NbNiTe2 structure in space group 53 (Pmna) - having an inversion center arising from two glide planes and one mirror plane with a 2-fold rotation and screw axis - a full gap opening exists between two band manifolds near the Fermi energy. Upon atomic displacements by optical phonons, the symmetry lowers to space group 28 (Pma2), eliminating one glide plane along c, the associated rotation and screw axis, and the inversion center. As a result, twenty Weyl points emerge, including four type-II Weyl points in the G-X direction at the boundary between a pair of adjacent electron and hole bands. Thus, optical phonons may offer control of the transition to a Weyl fermion state.

References in corpus (8)

• WannierTools: An open-source software package for novel topological materials
• Topological Crystalline Insulators
• Weyl semimetal phase in non-centrosymmetric transition metal monophosphides
• Surface States of the Topological Insulator Bi_{1-x}Sb_x
• Phonon-induced topological transitions and crossovers in Dirac materials
• Temperature effects in the band structure of topological insulators
• Phonon-induced topological insulation
• Temperature-induced topological phase transitions: promoted vs. suppressed non-trivial topology

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Light-Driven Raman Coherence as a Non-Thermal Route to Ultrafast Topology Switching
• Floquet analysis of excitations in materials
• Ideal type-II Weyl phonons in wurtzite CuI
• Unraveling the topology of ZrTe${}_5$ by changing temperature
• Temperature dependence of the bulk Rashba splitting in the bismuth tellurohalides
• Topological semimetallic phase in PbO${}_2$ promoted by temperature
• Expansive Open Fermi Arcs and Connectivity Changes Induced by Infrared Phonons in ZrTe5
• Influence of local symmetry on lattice dynamics coupled to topological surface states
• Topological Nontrivial Phase in Hexagonal Antiperovskites A3BiB (A=Ba,Sr; B=P,N)
• Ab-initio Simulations of Coherent Phonon-Induced Pumping of Carriers in Zirconium Pentatelluride
• Theory of phonon instabilities in Weyl semimetals at high magnetic fields