Chiral anomaly and classical negative magnetoresistance of Weyl metal

by B.Z.Spivak (University of Washington, Seattle WA 98115, USA)

Wednesday 19 Sept 2012, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Stockholm

12:026

Materials with nontrivial topological properties have attracted considerable interest after the discovery of topological insulators . One type of such materials is the so-called Weyl semimetals, characterized by the presence of points of band touching (Dirac points).

We study the metallic counterparts of these materials-the Weyl metals, where Dirac points are hidden inside a Fermi surface. Fermi surfaces in these systems possess nonzero fluxes of the Berry curvature.

We show that these materials may exhibit large classical negative magnetoresistance with unusual anisotropy. We also find a new type of plasma waves in these systems. These phenomena are consequences of chiral anomaly in electron transport theory.