Anomalous transport phenomena in Weyl metal beyond the Drude model for Landau's Fermi liquids

TL;DR

This paper reviews how Weyl metals with strong spin-orbit coupling exhibit anomalous transport phenomena that extend beyond the traditional Drude model, due to topological effects like Berry curvature and chiral anomaly.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework for understanding electromagnetic properties of Weyl metals using axion electrodynamics, beyond Landau's Fermi-liquid theory.

Findings

Weyl metals exhibit anomalous transport phenomena due to topological effects.

Electromagnetic properties are described by axion electrodynamics, not conventional Maxwell equations.

Experimental realization in Bi$_{1-x}$Sb$_{x}$ demonstrates these effects under magnetic fields.

Abstract

Landau's Fermi-liquid theory is the standard model for metals, characterized by the existence of electron quasiparticles near a Fermi surface as long as Landau's interaction parameters lie below critical values for instabilities. Recently, this fundamental paradigm has been challenged by physics of strong spin-orbit coupling although the concept of electron quasiparticles remains valid near the Fermi surface, where the Landau's Fermi-liquid theory fails to describe electromagnetic properties of this novel metallic state, referred to as Weyl metal. A novel ingredient is that such a Fermi surface encloses a Weyl point with definite chirality, referred to as a chiral Fermi surface, which can arise from breaking of either time reversal or inversion symmetry in systems with strong spin-orbit coupling, responsible for both Berry curvature and chiral anomaly. As a result, electromagnetic properties of the Weyl metallic state are described not by conventional Maxwell equations but by axion electrodynamics, where Maxwell equations are modified with a topological-in-origin spatially modulated $\theta(\bm{r}) \bm{E} \cdot \bm{B}$ term. This novel metallic state has been realized recently in Bi$_{1-x}$Sb$_{x}$ around $x \sim 3%$ under magnetic fields, where the Dirac spectrum appears around the critical point between the normal semiconducting ($x < 3%$) and topological semiconducting phases ($x > 3%$) and the time reversal symmetry breaking perturbation causes the Dirac point to split into a pair of Weyl points along the direction of the applied magnetic field for such a strong spin-orbit coupled system. In this review article, we discuss how the topological structure of both the Berry curvature and chiral anomaly (axion electrodynamics) gives rise to anomalous transport phenomena in Bi$_{1-x}$Sb$_{x}$ around $x \sim 3%$ under magnetic fields, modifying the Drude model of Landau's Fermi liquids.