Pseudo-gauge Fields in Dirac and Weyl Materials

Abstract

Electrons in low-temperature solids are governed by the non-relativistic Schr$\ddot{o}$dinger equation, since the electron velocities are much slower than the speed of light. Remarkably, the low-energy quasi-particles given by electrons in various materials can behave as relativistic Dirac/Weyl fermions that obey the relativistic Dirac/Weyl equation. These materials are called "Dirac/Weyl materials", which provide a tunable platform to test relativistic quantum phenomena in table-top experiments. More interestingly, different types of physical fields in these Weyl/Dirac materials, such as magnetic fluctuations, lattice vibration, strain, and material inhomogeneity, can couple to the "relativistic" quasi-particles in a similar way as the $U(1)$ gauge coupling. As these fields do not have gauge-invariant dynamics in general, we refer to them as "pseudo-gauge fields". In this chapter, we overview the concept and the physical consequences of pseudo-gauge fields in Weyl/Dirac materials. In particular, we will demonstrate that pseudo-gauge fields can provide a unified understanding of a variety of physical phenomena, including chiral zero modes inside a magnetic vortex core of magnetic Weyl semimetals, a giant current response at magnetic resonance in magnetic topological insulators, and piezo-electromagnetic response in time-reversal invariant systems. These phenomena are deeply related to various concepts in high-energy physics, such as chiral anomaly and axion electrodynamics.

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• The electronic properties of graphene
• Topological Field Theory of Time-Reversal Invariant Insulators
• Electrical Manipulation of a Topological Antiferromagnetic State
• Chiral anomaly, Charge Density Waves, and Axion Strings from Weyl Semimetals
• Axion Electrodynamics in Topological Materials
• Tailoring tricolor structure of magnetic topological insulator for robust axion insulator
• Strain induced Chiral Magnetic Effect in Weyl semimetals
• Consistent Chiral Kinetic Theory in Weyl Materials: Chiral Magnetic Plasmons
• Chiral magnetic plasmons in anomalous relativistic matter
• Pseudomagnetic helicons

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Thermal transport, geometry, and anomalies
• Effective field theories of topological crystalline insulators and topological crystals
• Ultrafast control of moiré pseudo-electromagnetic field in homobilayer semiconductors
• Phonon helicity and Nieh-Yan Anomaly in the Kramers-Weyl semimetals of Chiral Crystals
• Strain-induced collapse of Landau Levels in real Weyl semimetals