2018/01/31 by Justin H. Wilson, J. H. Pixley, David A. Huse +2 · 51 citations
Materials Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides #Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope #Fermi surface #Geology #Geometry #Graphene research and applications #Mathematics #Physics #Semimetal #Surface (topology) #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Weyl semimetal #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.97.235108
published in Physical review. B./Physical review. B 97(23) (American Physical Society) · Single column; 24 pages, 12 figures
openalex publication_date 2018/06/07 · arxiv created 2018/06/27 · arxiv updated 2018/06/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Weyl semimetals are exotic topological materials that host massless (pseudo)relativistic quasiparticle excitations that mimic Weyl fermions and possess topological surface states, which form a ``Fermi arc'' and which, it has been argued, are protected against weak interactions and disorder. Recent experiments as, for instance, those on TaAs demonstrate the existence of Weyl semimetals and their exotic surface states. Using high-performance numerics, the authors show that disorder destroys the topological protection of the surface states by promoting hybridization with rare resonances in the bulk. It is shown here that the surface currents resulting from the Fermi arc are remarkably robust, which demonstrates their experimental signatures and technological applicability even in dirty samples.