Chiral kinetic theory in the presence of dark photon

TL;DR

This paper develops a chiral kinetic theory for Weyl and Dirac semimetals considering both electromagnetic and dark sector gauge fields, revealing how dark matter could influence transport properties in topological materials.

Contribution

It introduces a modified kinetic equation incorporating dark photon interactions, extending the understanding of topological semimetals in the context of dark matter detection.

Findings

Dark sector modifies transport coefficients in Weyl/Dirac semimetals.

Coupling between visible and dark gauge fields affects Berry curvature.

Dark magnetic field influences the material's transport behavior.

Abstract

Finding signatures of dark matter in transport characteristics of solids would be an important step on the road to detect this illusive component of the mass of our Universe. This is especially important and timely as the experiments designed to directly detect dark matter particles continue to provide negative results. As a first step in this direction we consider topologically non-trivial Weyl or Dirac semimetals and derive the modified kinetic equation taking into account two coupled $U(1)$-gauge fields, one being the standard Maxwell electromagnetic field and other corresponding to the dark sector. The resulting Boltzmann kinetic equation is modified by the Berry curvature which couples to both visible and dark sector gauge fields. It was revealed that the dark sector induces modifications of transport coefficients due to the appearance of coupling constant between gauge fields and dark sector magnetic field.