On the magnetotransport of Weyl semimetals due to the chiral anomaly

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the chiral anomaly affects magnetoconductivity in Weyl semimetals, revealing non-analytic magnetic field dependence and linear effects due to tilt-induced symmetry breaking.

Contribution

It introduces a semiclassical kinetic approach to analyze magnetotransport, uncovering non-analytic and linear magnetoconductivity behaviors caused by the chiral anomaly and tilt effects.

Findings

Magnetoconductivity can be a non-analytic function of magnetic field, proportional to B^{3/2} at finite temperature.

Chiral anomaly leads to positive quadratic magnetoconductivity.

Tilt of Dirac cones results in linear magnetoconductivity due to broken time-reversal symmetry.

Abstract

We study electric field and temperature gradient driven magnetoconductivity of a Weyl semimetal system. To analyze the responses, we utilize the kinetic equation with semiclassical equations of motion modified by the Berry curvature and orbital magnetization of the wave-packet. Apart from known positive quadratic magnetoconductivity, we show that due to chiral anomaly, the magnetconductivity can become non-analytic function of the magnetic field, proportional to 3/2 power of the magnetic field at finite temperatures. We also show that time-reversal symmetry breaking tilt of the Dirac cones results in linear magnetoconductivity. This is due to one-dimensional chiral anomaly the tilt is responsible for.