Longitudinal DC Conductivity in Dirac Nodal Line Semimetals: Intrinsic and Extrinsic Contributions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the longitudinal DC conductivity in Dirac nodal line semimetals, revealing how intrinsic and extrinsic contributions vary with chemical potential and mass, providing insights into their complex electronic responses.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of intrinsic and extrinsic DC conductivity contributions in Dirac nodal line semimetals, especially under broken $ ext{PT}$ symmetry, using quantum kinetic methods.

Findings

Extrinsic contribution dominates at low chemical potential.

Intrinsic contribution becomes significant at high chemical potential.

Total DC response saturates at high chemical potential and decreases with mass.

Abstract

Nodal line semimetals, a class of topological quantum materials, exhibit a variety of novel phenomena due to their properties, such as bands touching on a one-dimensional line or a ring in the Brillouin zone and drumhead-like surface states. In addition, these semimetals are protected by the combined space-inversion and time-reversal ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetry. In this study, we investigate the longitudinal DC conductivity of the Dirac nodal line semimetals for the broken $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric system by the mass term. Here, using the quantum kinetic technique, we find the intrinsic (field-driven) and extrinsic (scattering-driven) contributions to the total DC conductivity due to interband effects. Interestingly, the resulting intrinsic conductivity is the Fermi sea contribution, while the extrinsic stems from the Fermi surface contribution. We show that at low chemical potential, the extrinsic part contributes more and dominates over the traditional Drude intraband term, while at the high chemical potential, the intrinsic conductivity contributes. Furthermore, the total DC response due to interband effects saturates at high chemical potential and its strength decreases with increasing mass value. Our findings suggest that the extrinsic contributions are rich enough to understand the overall feature of the response for the three-dimensional system.