Interacting Weyl fermions: Phases, phase transitions and global phase diagram

TL;DR

This paper investigates how short-range interactions influence three-dimensional Weyl semimetals, revealing their stability against weak interactions and identifying possible phase transitions and broken symmetry phases at strong coupling.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the stability, phase transitions, and critical behavior of Weyl semimetals under short-range interactions, including the scaling of physical quantities.

Findings

Weyl semimetals are stable against weak short-range interactions.

Strong interactions induce phase transitions to insulators or symmetry-breaking phases.

Correlation length exponent for continuous transitions is 1/n, indicating non-Gaussian criticality.

Abstract

We study the effects of short-range interactions on a generalized three-dimensional Weyl semimetal, where the band touching points act as the (anti)monopoles of Abelian Berry curvature of strength $n$. We show that any local interaction has a \emph{negative} scaling dimension $-2/n$. Consequently all Weyl semimetals are stable against weak short-range interactions. For sufficiently strong interactions, we demonstrate that the Weyl semimetal either undergoes a first order transition into a band insulator or a continuous transition into a symmetry breaking phase. A translational symmetry breaking axion insulator and a rotational symmetry breaking semimetal are two prominent candidates for the broken symmetry phase. At the one-loop order, the correlation length exponent for continuous transitions is $\nu=n/2$, indicating their non-Gaussian nature for any $n>1$. We also discuss the scaling of the thermodynamic and transport quantities in general Weyl semimetals as well as inside the broken symmetry phases.