Search for plasmons in isotropic Luttinger semimetals

Abstract

Luttinger semimetals include materials like gray tin ($\alpha$-Sn) and mercury telluride, which are three-dimensional gapless semiconductors having a quadratic band crossing point (QBCP). Due to a growing interest in QBCPs and new experimental efforts, it is essential to study the finite-temperature properties of such systems. In this paper, we investigate the emergence of plasmons in the presence of Coulomb interactions in isotropic Luttinger semimetals, for zero as well as generic nonzero temperatures. When the Fermi level lies right at the QBCP, which is the point where twofold degenerate conduction and valence bands touch each other quadratically, we find that plasmons cannot appear at zero temperature. However, for nonzero temperatures, thermal plasmons are generated. Whether they are long-lived or not depends on the values of temperature, effective electron mass and effective fine-structure constant, and the number of fermion flavors. We also numerically estimate the behavior of the inelastic scattering rate at nonzero temperatures, as a function of energy, where the signatures of the QBCP thermal plasmons show up as a sharp peak. Our results will thus serve as a guide to experimental probes on these systems.

15 pages, 6 figures; journal version accepted in Annals of Physics

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• Thermoelectric response in nodal-point semimetals
• Raman response and shear viscosity in the non-Fermi liquid phase of Luttinger semimetals
• Dielectric and electronic properties of three-dimensional Luttinger semimetals with a quadratic band touching
• Dielectric function and plasmons of doped three-dimensional Luttinger semimetals
• Zero sound and plasmon modes for non-Fermi liquids
• Transport properties in non-Fermi liquid phases of nodal-point semimetals
• Anatomy of plasmons in generic Luttinger semimetals
• Hybrid Dispersion Dirac semimetal and Hybrid Weyl phases in Luttinger Semimetals: A dynamical approach
• Linear response of tilted anisotropic two-dimensional Dirac cones
• Anisotropic conductivity for the type-I and type-II phases of Weyl/multi-Weyl semimetals in planar Hall set-ups
• Delta-function-potential junctions with quasiparticles occupying tilted bands with quadratic-in-momentum dispersion
• Transmission through rectangular potentials in semimetals featuring quadratic dispersion