Fermi arcs for generic nodal points hosting monopoles or dipoles

TL;DR

This paper analytically characterizes Fermi arcs in topological semimetals for various nodal point types, including monopoles and dipoles, revealing their dependence on topological charges and band dispersions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of Fermi arc structures for generic nodal points with different degeneracies and dispersions, including the case of dipoles with zero monopole charge.

Findings

Fermi arcs are linked to the topological charge of nodes.

The structure of Fermi arcs varies with degeneracy and dispersion type.

Dipole nodes can host Fermi arcs despite having zero monopole charge.

Abstract

Fermi arcs represent the surface states at the boundary of a three-dimensional topological semimetal with the vacuum, illustrating the notion of bulk-boundary correspondence playing out in real materials. Their special character is tied up with the topological charges carried by the nodes of the semimetal in the momentum space, where two or more bands cross. In fact, they are constrained to begin and end on the perimeters of the projections of the Fermi surfaces of the bands tangentially, signalling their mixing with the bulk states. The number of Fermi arcs grazing onto the tangents of the outermost projection about a given node also reflects the magnitude of the charge at the node (equalling the Berry-curvature monopole), revealing the intrinsic topology of the underlying bandstructure, which can be visualised in experiments like ARPES. Here we take upon the task of unambiguously characterising the analytical structure of these states for generic nodal points, (1) whose degeneracy might be twofold or multifold; and (2) the associated bands might exhibit isotropic or anisotropic, linear- or nonlinear-in-momentum dispersion. Moreover, we also address the question of whether we should get any Fermi arcs at all for topological nodes carrying zero values of monopoles, but representing ideal dipoles.