Chiral kinetic theory of anomalous transport induced by torsion

TL;DR

This paper develops a kinetic theory framework for Weyl semimetals under torsion, revealing how torsion induces chiral chemical potential and the chiral magnetic effect, providing a new way to detect anomalous couplings.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive kinetic theory incorporating Berry curvature effects due to torsion in Weyl systems, linking torsion to anomalous transport phenomena.

Findings

Torsion generates a chiral chemical potential in Weyl semimetals.

Torsion induces a chiral magnetic effect in the presence of magnetic fields.

Proposes measuring torsion-induced CME as a detection method for anomalous couplings.

Abstract

In Weyl semimetals subjected to torsion, there are two different kinds of chirality: i) the (coordinate-space) shape of the twisted crystal is chiral, and ii) the momentum space contains chiral quasi-particles. Here we construct a general kinetic theory of anomalous transport using the phase space (coordinate and momentum spaces combined) Berry curvature induced by torsion in Weyl systems. We describe how torsion generates the chiral chemical potential, and thus leads to the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME) in the presence of a background magnetic field. We propose to measure the CME current induced by the torsion as a way to detect the anomalous coupling between the coordinate-space and momentum-space chiralities.