Semimetal with both Rarita-Schwinger-Weyl and Weyl excitations

2015/06/17 by Long Liang, Yue Yu · 62 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Band gap #Brillouin zone #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Lattice (music) #Massless particle #Physics #Quantum Mechanics and Non-Hermitian Physics #Quantum mechanics #Semimetal #Spin (aerodynamics) #Spinor #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Topological insulator #Weyl semimetal #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.str-el #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.93.045113

published in Physical review. B./Physical review. B 93(4) (American Physical Society) · 5 pages, 4 figures

arxiv created 2015/06/17 · openalex publication_date 2016/01/12 · arxiv updated 2016/01/20 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

A relativistic spinor with spin 3/2 is historically called a Rarita-Schwinger spinor. The right- and left-handed chiral degrees of freedom for the massless Rarita-Schwinger spinor are independent and are thought of as the left and right Weyl fermions with helicity \ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi3/2. We study three orbital spin-1/2 Weyl semimetals in the strong spin-orbital coupling limit with time reversal symmetry breaking. We find that in this limit the systems can be a J_eff=1/2 Weyl semimetal or a J_eff=3/2 semimetal, depending on the Fermi level position. The latter near Weyl points includes degrees of freedom of both Rarita-Schwinger-Weyl and Weyl. A nonlocal potential separates the Weyl and Rarita-Schwinger-Weyl degrees of freedom, and a relativistic Rarita-Schwinger-Weyl semimetal emerges. This recipe can be generalized to a mulit-Weyl semimetal and Weyl fermions with pairing interaction to obtain high monopole charges. Similarly, a spatial-inversion-breaking Raita-Schwinger-Weyl semimetal may also emerge.

Citations

• Topological semimetal and Fermi-arc surface states in the electronic structure of pyrochlore iridates
• Topological insulators and superconductors
• Observation of a three-dimensional topological Dirac semimetal phase in high-mobility Cd3As2
• Propagation and Quantization of Rarita-Schwinger Waves in an External Electromagnetic Potential
• Multi-Weyl Topological Semimetals Stabilized by Point Group Symmetry
• Magnetotransport of single crystalline NbAs
• Topological Insulators
• Weyl Semimetal Phase in Noncentrosymmetric Transition-Metal Monophosphides
• Emergence of supersymmetry at a critical point of a lattice model
• Topological crystalline insulators and Dirac octets in antiperovskites
• On a Theory of Particles with Half-Integral Spin
• Magnetotransport of single crystalline YSb