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Chirality flip of Weyl nodes and its manifestation in strained MoTe2
2021, Könye, Viktor, Bouhon, Adrien, Fulga, Ion Cosma, Slager, Robert-Jan, van den Brink, Jeroen, Facio, Jorge I.
Due to their topological charge, or chirality, the Weyl cones present in topological semimetals are considered robust against arbitrary perturbations. One well-understood exception to this robustness is the pairwise creation or annihilation of Weyl cones, which involves the overlap of two oppositely charged nodes in energy and momentum. Here we show that their topological charge can in fact change sign, in a process that involves the merging of not two, but three Weyl nodes. This is facilitated by the presence of rotation and time-reversal symmetries, which constrain the relative positions of Weyl cones in momentum space. We analyze the chirality flip process, showing that transport properties distinguish it from the conventional, double Weyl merging. Moreover, we predict that the chirality flip occurs in MoTe$_2$, where experimentally accessible strain leads to the merging of three Weyl cones close to the Fermi level. Our work sets the stage to further investigate and observe such chirality flipping processes in different topological materials.
Creating Weyl nodes and controlling their energy by magnetization rotation
2020, Ghimire, Madhav Prasad, Facio, Jorge I., You, Jhih-Shih, Ye, Linda, Checkelsky, Joseph G., Fang, Shiang, Kaxiras, Efthimios, Richter, Manuel, van den Brink, Jeroen
As they do not rely on the presence of any crystal symmetry, Weyl nodes are robust topological features of an electronic structure that can occur at any momentum and energy. Acting as sinks and sources of Berry curvature, Weyl nodes have been predicted to strongly affect the transverse electronic response, like in the anomalous Hall or Nernst effects. However, to observe large anomalous effects the Weyl nodes need to be close to or at the Fermi level, which implies the band structure must be tuned by an external parameter, e.g., chemical doping. Here we show that in a ferromagnetic metal tuning of the Weyl node energy and momentum can be achieved by rotation of the magnetization. First, taking as example the elementary magnet hcp-Co, we use electronic structure calculations based on density-functional theory to show that by canting the magnetization away from the easy axis, Weyl nodes can be driven exactly to the Fermi surface. Second, we show that the same phenomenology applies to the kagome ferromagnet Co3Sn2S2, in which we additionally show how the dynamics in energy and momentum of the Weyl nodes affects the calculated anomalous Hall and Nernst conductivities. Our results highlight how the intrinsic magnetic anisotropy can be used to engineer Weyl physics.
V4 tetrahedral units in AV4X8 lacunar spinels: Near degeneracy, charge fluctuations, and configurational mixing within a valence space of up to 21 d orbitals
2020, Hozoi, L., Eldeeb, M.S., Rößler, U.K.
All properties of a given molecule or solid are determined by the way valence electrons are distributed over single-particle energy levels. For multiple, closely spaced single-particle levels, different occupation patterns may provide many-electron quantum states that are close in energy, interact, and admix. We address such near-degeneracy electron correlation effects for V4 vanadium tetrahedral units as encountered in the lacunar spinel GaV4S8, explicitly taking into account up to 21 vanadium valence orbitals, and find effective orbital occupation numbers much different as compared to the picture previously laid out on the basis of mean-field calculations. In light of these results, a modified theoretical frame seems necessary to explain the peculiar magnetic properties of lacunar spinels and of related compounds.