Electromagnetic response of interacting Weyl semimetals

V. P. J. Jacobs, Panagiotis Betzios, Umut Gursoy, H. T. C. Stoof

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

We study the electromagnetic properties of Weyl semimetals with strong interactions. Focusing on a single Weyl cone in the band structure, we induce strong interactions by coupling the Weyl fermion with a tunable coupling constant $g_f$ to a quantum critical system. The critical fluctuations are described by a conformal field theory containing fermionic operators with scaling dimension $\Delta$. Employing the methods of the holographic correspondence, we then derive the effective theory of the Weyl fermion in the presence of external electric and magnetic fields. In particular, we determine the frequency and momentum-dependent anomalous magnetic moment of the Weyl fermions. We also determine the conductivity of the Weyl semimetal including the vertex corrections consistent with the Ward identity. Finally, we connect our construction to the case of Coulomb interactions in Weyl semimetals by tuning the parameters $\Delta \rightarrow 5/2$ and $g_f^2 \rightarrow e/\sqrt{\hbar c\epsilon_0$.
Original languageEnglish
Article number195104
JournalPhysical Review B
Volume93
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 May 2016

Bibliographical note

5 pages, 4 figures: v2 presentation improved, typos corrected

Keywords

  • hep-th
  • cond-mat.str-el

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