New Quantum Transition in Weyl Semimetals with Correlated Disorder

TL;DR

This paper investigates how spatially correlated disorder affects Weyl semimetals, revealing different phase transition scenarios and a novel critical behavior depending on disorder correlation decay.

Contribution

It introduces a renormalization group analysis showing new disorder-induced phase transition regimes in Weyl semimetals with correlated disorder.

Findings

Standard transition for short-range correlations

Instability to weak disorder for slow decay correlations

New phase transition with unique critical behavior

Abstract

A Weyl semimetal denotes an electronic phase of solids in which two bands cross linearly. In this paper we study the effect of a spatially correlated disorder on such a phase. Using a renormalization group analysis, we show that in three dimensions, three scenarios are possible depending on the disorder correlations. A standard transition is recovered for short range correlations. For disorder decaying slower than $1/r^{2}$, the Weyl semimetal is unstable to any weak disorder and no transition persists. In between, a new phase transition occurs. This transition still separates a disordered metal from a semi-metal, but with a new critical behavior that we analyze to two-loop order.