Superconductivity Provides Access to the Chiral Magnetic Effect of an Unpaired Weyl Cone

T. E. O’Brien; C. W. J. Beenakker; İ. Adagideli

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.207701

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Superconductivity Provides Access to the Chiral Magnetic Effect of an Unpaired Weyl Cone

T. E. O’Brien, C. W. J. Beenakker, İ. Adagideli

DOI 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.207701 · Physical Review Letters

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Abstract

The massless fermions of a Weyl semimetal come in two species of opposite chirality, in two cones of the band structure. As a consequence, the current j induced in one Weyl cone by a magnetic field B [the chiral magnetic effect (CME)] is canceled in equilibrium by an opposite current in the other cone. Here, we show that superconductivity offers a way to avoid this cancellation, by means of a flux bias that gaps out a Weyl cone jointly with its particle-hole conjugate. The remaining gapless Weyl cone and its particle-hole conjugate represent a single fermionic species, with renormalized charge e* and a single chirality ± set by the sign of the flux bias. As a consequence, the CME is no longer canceled in equilibrium but appears as a supercurrent response ∂j/∂B=±(e*e/h2)μ along the magnetic field at chemical potential μ.

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Formula	Reported Tc (K)	Pressure (GPa)	Type
Bi2Se3 Archive — visibility unverified Source-occurrence policy only; no material identity or catalogue acceptance is inferred from the formula.	—	Pressure not reported	unknown