Chirality Hall Effect in Weyl Semimetals

TL;DR

This paper predicts a universal chirality-dependent transverse shift in electron wave-packets in Weyl semimetals, influenced by Berry curvatures, and discusses methods to generate and detect this effect.

Contribution

It extends semiclassical theory to include Berry curvatures and predicts a novel chirality Hall effect in Weyl semimetals.

Findings

Universal transverse shifts depend on chirality

Breaking inversion symmetry creates imbalance

Methods to generate and detect the effect

Abstract

We generalize a semiclassical theory and use the argument of angular momentum conservation to examine the ballistic transport in lightly-doped Weyl semimetals, taking into account various phase-space Berry curvatures. We predict universal transverse shifts of the wave-packet center in transmission and reflection, perpendicular to the direction in which the Fermi energy or velocities change adiabatically. The anomalous shifts are opposite for electrons with different chirality, and can be made imbalanced by breaking inversion symmetry. We discuss how to utilize local gates, strain effects, and circularly polarized lights to generate and probe such a chirality Hall effect.