Global topology of Weyl semimetals and Fermi arcs

We provide a manifestly topological classification scheme for generalised Weyl semimetals, in any spatial dimension and with arbitrary Weyl surfaces which may be non-trivially linked. The classification naturally incorporates that of Chern insulators. Our analysis refines, in a mathematically precis...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2018-06
Main Authors: Mathai, Varghese, Guo Chuan Thiang
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Classification
Insulators
Metalloids
Topology
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:We provide a manifestly topological classification scheme for generalised Weyl semimetals, in any spatial dimension and with arbitrary Weyl surfaces which may be non-trivially linked. The classification naturally incorporates that of Chern insulators. Our analysis refines, in a mathematically precise sense, some well-known 3D constructions to account for subtle but important global aspects of the topology of semimetals. Using a fundamental locality principle, we derive a generalized charge cancellation condition for the Weyl surface components. We analyse the bulk-boundary correspondence under a duality transformation, which reveals explicitly the topological nature of the resulting surface Fermi arcs. We also analyse the effect of moving Weyl points on the bulk and boundary topological semimetal invariants.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1607.02242