Large enhancement of Edelstein effect in Weyl semimetals from Fermi-arc surface states

Abstract

One remarkable feature of Weyl semimetals is the manifestation of their topological nature in the form of the Fermi-arc surface states. In a recent calculation by \cite{Johansson2018}, the current-induced spin polarization or Edelstein effect has been predicted, within the semiclassical Boltzmann theory, to be strongly amplified in a Weyl semimetal TaAs due to the existence of the Fermi arcs. Motivated by this result, we calculate the Edelstein response of an effective model for an inversion-symmetry-breaking Weyl semimetal in the presence of an interface using linear response theory. The scatterings from scalar impurities are included and the vertex corrections are computed within the self-consistent ladder approximation. At chemical potentials close to the Weyl points, we find the surface states have a much stronger response near the interface than the bulk states by about one to two orders of magnitude. At higher chemical potentials, the surface states' response near the interface decreases to be about the same order of magnitude as the bulk states' response. We attribute this phenomenon to the decoupling between the Fermi arc states and bulk states at energies close to the Weyl points. The surface states which are effectively dispersing like a one-dimensional chiral fermion become nearly nondissipative. This leads to a large surface vertex correction and, hence, a strong enhancement of the surface states' Edelstein response.