Synthesizing Weyl semimetals in weak topological insulator and topological crystalline insulator multilayers

Abstract

We propose a different route to time-reversal invariant Weyl semimetals employing multilayer heterostructures comprising ordinary "trivial" insulators and nontrivial insulators with \textit{pairs} of protected Dirac cones on the surface. We consider both the case of weak topological insualtors, where surface Dirac cones are pinned to time-reversal invariant momenta, and of topological crystalline insulators with unpinned surface Dirac cones. For both realizations we explain phenomenologically how the proposed construction leads to the emergence of a Weyl semimetal phase. We further formulate effective low-energy models for which we prove the existence of semimetallic phases with four isolated Weyl points. Finally, we discuss how the proposed design can be realized experimentally with state-of-the-art technologies.

5 pages + Supplemental Material

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Topological semimetals in the SnTe material class: Nodal lines and Weyl points
• Pseudo field effects in type II Weyl semimetals: new probes for over tilted cones
• Nodal-line semimetal superlattices