Strong suppression of electron convection in Dirac and Weyl semimetals

Abstract

It is shown that the convective instability in electron fluids in three- and two-dimensional (3D and 2D) Dirac and Weyl semimetals is strongly inhibited. The major obstacles for electron convection are the effects of the Coulomb forces and the momentum relaxation related to the interaction with impurities and phonons. The effect of the Coulomb forces is less pronounced in 2D materials, such as graphene. However, momentum relaxation still noticeably inhibits convection making it very difficult to achieve in practice.

8+11 pages, 1+4 figures; published version

References in corpus (6)

• Theory of the Nernst effect near quantum phase transitions in condensed matter, and in dyonic black holes
• Theory of universal incoherent metallic transport
• Hydrodynamics of electrons in graphene
• Spin fluctuation induced Weyl semimetal state in the paramagnetic phase of EuCd${}_2$As${}_2$
• Electron hydrodynamics dilemma: whirlpools or no whirlpools
• Rayleigh-Bénard Instability in Graphene

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Hydrodynamics of the electronic Fermi liquid: a pedagogical overview
• Weyl hydrodynamics in a strong magnetic field
• Stray magnetic field and stability of time-dependent viscous electron flow